Theoretical Studies of the Interactions of Transition Metals with Biomolecules

Abstract

Theoretical studies of various aspects of interactions of transition metal (TM) ions with biomolecules enable to analyze the principles governing the fundamental chemical processes, in which they participate, at the atomic or even electronic level. We present a concise review of the recent achievements in the field of quantum bioinorganic chemistry that is the studies dealing with the structure and energetics of TM containing systems of biological relevance. In the first part, the interactions of TM ions with smaller molecules are analyzed, since they constitute the elementary knowledge that helps to understand more complicated systems. Then, the work in the field of interactions of TM ions with nucleic acids and their components is briefly summarized. In the third part, we focus on structure, function, and spectroscopic behaviour of metal-binding sites in metalloproteins and finally, the perspectives of quantum bioinorganic chemistry are outlined.