Letters: March 2021

We were delighted to see an article focused on metalloenzymes. It rightly highlighted some of the amazing work going on towards the structural and mechanistic characterisation of enzymes that employ metal-containing cofactors, work that has revealed, and will certainly continue to reveal, new types of chemistry.

What was less welcome for us was the heavy focus on examples of work from US-based chemists (biological and inorganic), with not a single mention of UK-based researchers. This was very disappointing given that there is a wonderful tradition of world-leading biological inorganic chemistry in the UK, and that the membership of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) is largely UK based.

As one example, lytic polysaccharide monooxygenases (LPMOs) constitute a family of copper enzymes that was highlighted in the article. Much of the groundbreaking work on LPMOs was undertaken in the labs of Paul Walton and Gideon Davies at University of York (and they were recently honoured for this work through the RSC’s Rita and John Cornforth Award). Such is the strength of the UK biological inorganic community that the UK hosted the most recent biennial European Biological Inorganic Chemistry conference, and with backing from the RSC was recently selected as the venue for the flagship International Conference on Biological Inorganic Chemistry in 2027.

Members of the Committee, Inorganic Biochemistry Discussion Group (IBDG), an Interest Group of the RSC