Cadmium Carbonic Anhydrase (CdCA): Sustaining Life Using a Toxic Metal Ion

Submitted by Peter Craig / McDaniel College on Tue, 07/15/2014 - 01:18
Description

The Diatom Thalassiosira weissflogii is very resilient.  It thrives in poor quality water, where high CO2 levels, chlorine and cadmium ion concentrations, and pH are observed.  How is it possible for cadmium ions to be a nutrient for this diatom, when it is normally seen as a toxin in biological systems?

This LO introduces students to bioinorganic chemistry using the enzyme carbonic anhydrase to illustrate biodiversity, adaptation, HASB theory, metal ion ligand bonding as represented by the PDB using Ligand Explorer, and more.

The Japan syndrome

Submitted by Carmen Gauthier / Florida Southern College on Mon, 07/14/2014 - 17:38
Description

This is an in-class discussion of an article that appeared in The Economist.  It can be used to review several topics covered in the first year chemistry class.

Dissecting Catalysts for Artificial Photosynthesis

Submitted by Anne Bentley / Lewis & Clark College on Mon, 07/07/2014 - 13:57
Description

Anne asked the students in her junior/senior inorganic course to develop their own literature discussion learning objects and lead the rest of the class in a discussion of their article.  Each student chose one article from a list of suggestions provided.  Student Hayley Johnston chose this article describing a Mn-containing catalyst for carbon dioxide reduction (Jonathan M. Smieja, Matthew D. Sampson, Kyle A. Grice, Eric E. Benson, Jesse D. Froehlich, and Clifford P.

Hard Soft Acid Base Theory - Coordination Trends in Alkali Metal Crown Ether Uranyl Halide Complexes: The Series [A(Crown)]2[UO2X4] Where A = Li, Na, K, and X = Cl, Br

Submitted by Gerard Rowe / University of South Carolina Aiken on Tue, 07/01/2014 - 11:13
Description

In this literature discussion, students are asked to read an article describing a series of uranyl halide compounds that contain an alkali counterion that interacts with one or more of the uranium's ligand atoms.  This paper stands out as a great example of the binding preferences of acids and bases, and can be explained very well using simple HSAB concepts.

Learning Objects used at the 2014 VIPEr Workshop on Bioinorganic Chemistry

Submitted by Betsy Jamieson / Smith College on Wed, 06/25/2014 - 09:32

This collection highlights the learning objects used at the 2014 VIPEr workshop on the Bioinorganic Applications of Coordination Chemistry to introduce participants to the field of bioinorganic chemistry.   They provide essential background information on how metals bind to proteins as well as the techniques used in the research papers presented at the workshop.  A list of learning objects created at the workshop based on the current research of our expert speakers can be found at: 

Exploring Proteins as Ligands using the Protein Data Bank

Submitted by Betsy Jamieson / Smith College on Tue, 06/17/2014 - 15:23
Description

This in class activity is designed to introduce students to how amino acid side chains can coordinate metal ions in proteins.  It guides students through the exploration of several metal binding sites in proteins using the Ligand Explorer program on the Protein Data Bank (PDB) website.  Essentially, it is a way for them to use the PDB to “discover” the information generally presented on this topic in the introductory chapters of bioinorganic textbooks.  At the end it asks students to think about Hard Soft Acid Base theory and to see how that can be applied to the binding of metals in protei

Student choice literature-based take home exam question

Submitted by Hilary Eppley / DePauw University on Fri, 01/24/2014 - 15:27
Description

During my junior/senior level inorganic course, we did several guided literature discussions over the course of the semester where the students read papers and answered a series of questions based on them (some from this site!).  As part of my take home final exam, I gave the students an open choice literature analysis question where they had the chance to integrate topics from the semester into their interpretation of a recent paper of their own choice from Inorganic Chemistry, this time with limited guidance.

The Iron that Keeps and Kills Us

Submitted by Katherine Franz / Duke University, Department of Chemistry on Mon, 09/16/2013 - 14:10
Description

This in-class activity requires that the students read an article in The Atlantic about an interesting (and modern) case of the plague.  The article provides a great platform to showcase the Inorganic side of broad societal themes like evolutionary biology, environmental and hereditary influences on disease, and the collaboration between biology, medicine, and history.  The article itself contains little chemistry, but can be used to guide students into learning about iron in bioinorganic chemistry.

 

Accompanying article found here:

A Schaaking development of colloidal hybrid nanoparticles

Submitted by Anne Bentley / Lewis & Clark College on Thu, 06/27/2013 - 10:52
Description

This literature discussion was created at the NSF-TUES sponsored workshop at Penn State, June 2013.  It is based on the article from Ray Schaak’s group (Buck, Matthew R.; Bondi, James F.; Schaak, Raymond E. “A total-synthesis framework for the construction of high-order colloidal hybrid nanoparticles” Nature Chemistry, 2012 4, 37-44, DOI: 10.1038/NCHEM.1195), which Ray presented at the workshop.

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