Metals in biology: life beyond carbon

This chapter highlights the vital role metals play in making life possible—from enabling essential messages to be passed between cells, to enabling proteins to adopt the right structure and function in the way that they should. Metals exhibit metallic bonding, which gives them high electrical conductivity; metalloids exhibit characteristics that fall part-way between the metals and non-metals. The metals sodium and potassium are essential to the transmission of nerve impulses by neurons. Calcium (in the form of calcium phosphate) is also a key component of bones in which it is blended with the protein collagen. The chapter then assesses how metals contribute to the structure and function of proteins, looking at metalloproteins. It also considers metals in cell metabolism, identifying the role of metals in biochemical reactions and energy transduction, and of trace metals in biology.