Journal
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MOLECULAR SCIENCES
Volume 17, Issue 1, Pages -Publisher
MDPI
DOI: 10.3390/ijms17010066
Keywords
essential metals; non-essential metals; periodic system of the elements; metallomics
Funding
- Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council [BB/K001442/1]
- BBSRC [BB/K001442/1] Funding Source: UKRI
Ask authors/readers for more resources
A significant number of chemical elements are either essential for life with known functions, or present in organisms with poorly defined functional outcomes. We do not know all the essential elements with certainty and we know even less about the functions of apparently non-essential elements. In this article, I discuss a basis for a biological periodic system of the elements and that biochemistry should include the elements that are traditionally part of inorganic chemistry and not only those that are in the purview of organic chemistry. A biological periodic system of the elements needs to specify what essential means and to which biological species it refers. It represents a snapshot of our present knowledge and is expected to undergo further modifications in the future. An integrated approach of biometal sciences called metallomics is required to understand the interactions of metal ions, the biological functions that their chemical structures acquire in the biological system, and how their usage is fine-tuned in biological species and in populations of species with genetic variations (the variome).
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available