This week, the 14th European Biological Inorganic Chemistry Conference (EurBIC) takes place in Birmingham, UK.
This series of events is an international and important forum for chemistry all over the world. EuroBIC provides a major platform to present and discuss ideas as well as the latest developments in a wide range of chemistry: from inorganic, through nanoscience, supramolecular chemistry to life science. The program of the conference comprises a broad field of topics, presented by many prominent lecturers.
MPI CEC director, Prof. Serena DeBeer (Dept. Inorganic Chemistry) is among these invited speakers. She will present the recent results of one of the projects realized in her group related to the biological, catalytic oxidation of methane to methanol. Prof. DeBeer will highlight the use of X-ray spectroscopy in understanding the geometric and electronic structure of the active side of methane monooxygenases enzymes (MMOS) in her lecture entitled "X-ray spectroscopic studies of biological methane oxidation". In her talk, she will also provide some insights into the proposed catalytic cycle of MMOs based on the spectroscopic characterization of the intermediates.
Moreover, two group leaders from Prof. DeBeer’s department are going to present the work of their groups in contributed talks. Dr. Ragnar Björnsson will give a presentation about new insights into nitrogenase: "QM/MM broken-symmetry DFT studies of FeMoco". In his talk, he is going to discuss the computational approaches in elucidating the electronic structure of model complexes related to Mo and V nitrogenase active sides.
Dr. Olaf Rüdiger will present a talk with the title "Fighting oxidative damage in H2 cycling (bio)catalysts", where he will present how his group has been working to protect hydrogenases and hydrogenase-inspired molecular catalysts against O2 damage using polymers or sulfides.