Metal clusters and enzymes : inorganic life

Living matter is commonly considered to be organic. In reality, we now know that a very large number of natural processes depend on the intervention of one or more metal ions. For example, almost 40% of all proteins function only because they bind one or more metal ions (sodium, magnesium, calcium, iron, zinc, copper, etc.) These are known as metalloproteins. The living world appears even more inorganic when some of these metal sites, associating several metal ions of the same type (homo-nuclear) or of a different type (hetero-nuclear) within inorganic clusters, resemble small pieces of solid material. This reality is poorly understood, and is the subject of this lecture. The approach is all the more relevant when we consider that these natural metal clusters are involved in biosynthetic and metabolic reactions of great importance to cellular life. Studying the structure, reactivity and assembly of these clusters is a fascinating area of research for bioinorganic chemistry, at the interface with biology.