Featured Speaker
The featured speaker this year will be Brian Bennett from the Medical College of Wisconsin.
Abstract
"Zn(II)-Enzymes and Electron Paramagnetic Resonance... ?"
Zinc-dependent enzymes catalyze a wide variety of hydrolytic reactions that are fundamental in biology and are targets for anticancer, anti-angiogenesis, anti-HIV and antimicrobial therapies. Understanding the chemistry of these reactions is key to designing better chemotherapeutic compounds and to developing novel hydrolytic strategies and catalysts. Alone among the transition ions found in metalloproteins, Zn(II) cannot be probed by either optical or paramagnetic resonance ('EPR') spectroscopies and this has hindered mechanistic studies on zinc enzymes. Co(II), however, is uniquely well-suited as a substitute for Zn(II) and often provides enzyme forms with very similar catalytic and kinetic properties to the native enzyme. The use of EPR of Co(II) as a structural and mechanistic tool for the investigation of zinc-dependent enzymes is described with examples.
