Coordination Chemistry of Sugar-Phosphate Complexes with Palladium(II), Rhenium(V) and Zinc(II)

Sugar phosphates play a decisive role in all organisms. They are ubiquitous in metabolism pathways such as the pentose-phosphate pathway or glycolysis. The reactions of these pathways are catalysed by enzymes. Several of these contain divalent metal centres, e.g. magnesium, iron or zinc, in their active site. The dications are chelated by the sugar-phosphate substrates during the catalysed reaction. Well known examples for such metalloenzymes are class-II aldolase, fructose 1,6-bisphosphatase and glucose-6-phosphate isomerase. Since crystal-structure analyses of enzymes offer only limited results about the initial binding of ground-state sugar-phosphate forms to metal centres, it is necessary to investigate such complexes in aqueous solution outside enzymes.

In this work the coordination chemistry of sugar-phosphate complexes with palladium(II), rhenium(V) and zinc(II) is investigated. Analytical methods used are NMR spectroscopy, crystal-structure analysis and mass spectrometry.