Binuclear iron, manganese and copper centres in biology: Synthetic analogue approach

Identification of binuclear (oxo-/hydroxo-/carboxylato bridged) iron, manganese and copper centres of biology are of comparatively recent origin, Noteworthy among them and of relevance to this article are: (i) the marine-invertebrate respiratory protein, hemerythrin (bridged diiron centre), (ii) oxygen-evolving centre of photosystem II (bridged manganese centres), (iii) manganese-containing catalase, pseudocatalase and ribonucleotide reductase (bridged dimanganese centres) and (iv) dicopper centre of tyrosinase. The presence of such bridged centres in biology has inspired bioinorganic chemists interested in synthetic model studies to synthesize and characterize such biological motifs in the laboratory, using designed ligands, Emphasis Is directed toward their molecular structure, electronic structure and functional properties to compare with that present in biology, This article summarizes the results obtained in the author's laboratory along these lines.