The cytochrome complex, or cyt c, is a small hemeprotein found loosely associated with the inner membrane of the mitochondrion where it plays a critical role in cellular respiration. It transfers electrons between Complexes III and IV. Cytochrome c is highly water-soluble, unlike other cytochromes. It is capable of undergoing oxidation and reduction as its iron atom converts between the ferrous and ferric forms, but does not bind oxygen. It also plays a major role in cell apoptosis. In humans, cytochrome c is encoded by the CYCS gene.
Plastocyanin is a copper-containing protein that mediates electron-transfer. It is found in a variety of plants, where it participates in photosynthesis. The protein is a prototype of the blue copper proteins, a family of intensely blue-colored metalloproteins. Specifically, it falls into the group of small type I blue copper proteins called "cupredoxins".
Bioinorganic chemistry is a field that examines the role of metals in biology. Bioinorganic chemistry includes the study of both natural phenomena such as the behavior of metalloproteins as well as artificially introduced metals, including those that are non-essential, in medicine and toxicology. Many biological processes such as respiration depend upon molecules that fall within the realm of inorganic chemistry. The discipline also includes the study of inorganic models or mimics that imitate the behaviour of metalloproteins.
Jacqueline K. Barton, is an American chemist. She worked as a professor of chemistry at Hunter College (1980–82), and at Columbia University (1983–89) before joining the California Institute of Technology. In 1997 she became the Arthur and Marian Hanisch Memorial Professor of Chemistry and from 2009 to 2019, the Norman Davidson Leadership Chair of the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Caltech. She currently is the John G. Kirkwood and Arthur A. Noyes Professor of Chemistry.
High potential iron-sulfur proteins (HIPIP) are a class of iron-sulfur proteins. They are ferredoxins that participate in electron transfer in photosynthetic bacteria as well as in Paracoccus denitrificans.
Robert Joseph Paton Williams was an English chemist, an Emeritus Fellow at Wadham College, Oxford and an Emeritus Professor at the University of Oxford.
Daniel George Nocera is an American chemist, currently the Patterson Rockwood Professor of Energy in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2006 he was described as a "major force in the field of inorganic photochemistry and photophysics". Time magazine included him in its 2009 list of the 100 most influential people.
Nathan S. Lewis is the George L. Argyros Professor of Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). He specializes in functionalization of silicon and other semiconductor surfaces, chemical sensing using chemiresistive sensor arrays, and alternative energy and artificial photosynthesis.
Jay Richmond Winkler, Ph.D. is an American physical chemist, currently director of the Beckman Institute Laser Resource Center at the California Institute of Technology. He has authored over two hundred twenty five articles on applications of inorganic spectroscopy, including the pioneering study of intramolecular electron transfer reactions in biological systems.
Christopher J. Chang is a professor of chemistry and of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley, where he holds the Class of 1942 Chair. Chang is also a member of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, adjunct professor of pharmaceutical chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco, and faculty scientist at the chemical sciences division of Lawrence Berkeley Lab. He is the recipient of several awards for his research in bioinorganic chemistry, molecular and chemical biology.
Stephen James Lippard is the Arthur Amos Noyes Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is considered one of the founders of bioinorganic chemistry, studying the interactions of nonliving substances such as metals with biological systems. He is also considered a founder of metalloneurochemistry, the study of metal ions and their effects in the brain and nervous system. He has done pioneering work in understanding protein structure and synthesis, the enzymatic functions of methane monooxygenase (MMO), and the mechanisms of cisplatin anticancer drugs. His work has applications for the treatment of cancer, for bioremediation of the environment, and for the development of synthetic methanol-based fuels.
Joshua Coon is a professor of chemistry and biomolecular chemistry and the inaugural holder of the Thomas and Margaret Pyle Chair at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and an affiliate of the Morgridge Institute for Research.
Edward I. Solomon is the Monroe E. Spaght Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University. He is an elected member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been profiled in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He has also been a longtime collaborator with many scientists, including Professor Kenneth D. Karlin at Johns Hopkins University.
A transition metal oxo complex is a coordination complex containing an oxo ligand. Formally O2-, an oxo ligand can be bound to one or more metal centers, i.e. it can exist as a terminal or (most commonly) as bridging ligands (Fig. 1). Oxo ligands stabilize high oxidation states of a metal. They are also found in several metalloproteins, for example in molybdenum cofactors and in many iron-containing enzymes. One of the earliest synthetic compounds to incorporate an oxo ligand is potassium ferrate (K2FeO4), which was likely prepared by Georg E. Stahl in 1702.
The Beckman Institute at Caltech is a multi-disciplinary center for research in the chemical and biological sciences, located at and partnering with the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, California, United States.
Jillian Lee Dempsey is an American inorganic chemist and the Bowman and Gordon Gray Distinguished Term Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Currently, her work focuses on proton-coupled electron transfer, charge transfer events, and quantum dots. She is the recipient of numerous awards for rising stars of chemistry, including most recently a 2016 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship and a 2016 Air Force's Young Investigator Research Program (YIP).
Samaresh Mitra is an Indian bioinorganic chemist and an INSA Senior Scientist at the Indian Institute of Chemical Biology (IICB). He is known for his researches on inorganic paramagnetic complexes and low-symmetry transition metal complexes and is an elected fellow of the Indian National Science Academy, the National Academy of Sciences, India and the Indian Academy of Sciences. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 1983, for his contributions to chemical sciences.
Mahdi Muhammad Abu-Omar is a Palestinian-American chemist, currently the Duncan and Suzanne Mellichamp Professor of Green Chemistry in the Departments of Chemistry & Biochemistry and Chemical Engineering at University of California, Santa Barbara.
David Nathan Beratan is an American chemist and physicist, the R.J. Reynolds Professor of Chemistry at Duke University. He has secondary appointments in the departments of Physics and Biochemistry. He is the director of the Center for Synthesizing Quantum Coherence, a NSF Phase I Center for Chemical Innovation.
Frances Ann Walker was an American chemist known for her work on heme protein chemistry. She was an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Chemical Society.
Harry Gray discusses How Arnold O. Beckman's Instrumental Voice Shaped Chemistry's History, and the Beckman Institute at Caltech; Profiles in Chemistry, Chemical Heritage Foundation 