Presidential Young Investigator Award: Metal Ion Regulationof Gene Expression

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This award under the Presidential Young Investigator Program provides support for research in the area of bioinorganic chemistry. The general topic of the research project is the roles which metal ions play in biological systems. Research will be pursued on two fronts: exploring the structural and functional roles of metals in novel gene regulatory metalloproteins and developing the chemistry of oxygen activating metal complexes containing biological ligands. The immediate targets are metalloproteins that play key roles in cellular metabolism of heavy metals, particularly those regulating gene expression or mediating heavy metal detoxification. In particular, attention will be given to metalloregulatory proteins which act as metal-responsive molecular switches, sensing changes in metal ion concentrations and adjusting the expression of relevant genes. On the second front the activation of oxygen by metal-nucleotide complexes will be investigated. Of particular interest is the mechanism by which mixtures of ADP and Fe(II) promote lipid peroxidation by molecular oxygen. Iron nucleotide complexes will be isolated and characterized, and the mechanism of activation of oxygen and their utility as epoxidation catalysts will be explored.