Science of SLAC | Life Support: The Critical Role of Metals in Biology

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Organic compounds – mostly carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen – make up 99 percent of our bodies. But other trace elements are also essential for our survival, and indeed for the survival of life on Earth. They include metals such as iron, copper, zinc, nickel, manganese and molybdenum that are typically embedded in a protein matrix. These “metalloproteins” catalyze, or promote, chemical reactions that sustain life, such as photosynthesis in plants and respiration and oxygen delivery in animals. Understanding how metalloproteins work is an important area of research called bioinorganic chemistry, in which scientists study the properties and functional mechanisms of proteins and use small model systems to mimic protein structure and chemistry. In her talk, Sarangi takes a closer look at these biological workhorses, how they are modeled in the lab and how X-ray absorption spectroscopy at SLAC’s SSRL helps shed light on the fascinating science of metals in biology.

Ritimukta Sarangi is a staff scientist in the Structural Molecular Biology group at SSRL. She holds an undergraduate degree in chemistry from St. Xavier College in Kolkata, India, a master’s degree in chemistry from IIT Kanpur in India and a PhD in chemistry from Stanford University. Her expertise is in hard X-ray spectroscopy, and her research focuses on understanding the geometric and electronic structure of metalloproteins. She is also deeply interested in using X-ray spectroscopy to understand chemical processes involving sulfur compounds in biological and other complex materials.