Accessing nature's inorganic secrets

This paper is an extended outline of the author's presidential address to the Chemistry Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science at the BAAS's Annual Festival of Science held in Sheffield in September 1999, One theme of the chemistry component of the festival was 'following nature's way', which was designed to show how chemists can learn from biology and apply that knowledge to generate advances in chemistry, and in this context the interface between inorganic chemistry and biology was drawn to attention. Chemists have utilised coordination compounds to serve as metallobiosite analogues and so gain insight into the nature of the sites. It is also possible to take the information acquired through protein crystallography, which gives a precise definition of the metal environment, to develop new chemistry. This paper shows how this synergistic interplay has helped to reveal the nature of the metallobiosites that transport dioxygen in nature and how an understanding of the nature of the metallobiosite in urease has helped in the generation of new coordination chemistry.