UE Bionorganic chemistry

This teaching module focuses on the main principles used in bioinorganic chemistry: i) to understand and mimic the metal binding sites naturally found in biological systems, and ii) to anticipate potential interactions of toxic metals or metal-based drugs in living organisms. A first part will be dedicated to the behavior of metal complexes in biologically-relevant conditions. We will present the main analytical and spectroscopic tools useful to decipher the nature of the metal complexes both in abiotic compounds and proteins. In a second part, important metal active sites (on the catalytic, therapeutic and biological points of view) will be described in details. The last part deals with the concept of bioinspired chemistry. We will see how bioinorganic chemists design complexes that are able to mimic natural systems.