(PhysOrg.com) -- Metalloproteins, such as the copper-containing azurin, play a major role in catalyzing electron transfer in cellular reactions. Understanding how their structure relates to function can give rise to advances in biotechnology and medicine. To accurately characterize the nature of the bonding -- covalent vs. ionic vs. hybrid -- around azurin's metal center, a team of researchers from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the University of Nebraska at Lincoln obtained the first high-field nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) signal of a copper site in a copper protein.
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