Vallee, whilst looking for zinc proteins

and also searching for a function for cadmium, uncovered a protein apparently for cadmium detoxification, cadmium metallothionein, in the kidney of horses [19]. A striking feature of the protein was the large numbers of cysteine residues in its sequence strongly indicative of cadmium thiolate binding. Another feature was the stoichiometry which appeared to be between four and five cadmium atoms per protein depending on the method of purification. The immediate suggestion was that one cadmium was more weakly bound. The more recent extensive work on the properties of the zinc form of this protein by his pupils, Kaegi [20] and Maret [21] and the copper proteins by Weser [22] have shown that there was similar weakish binding

of one metal ion. selleck kinase inhibitor The binding constants of the weakly bound zinc to these buffer proteins are about 109 M− 1[21] and [23]. Before going into my own interests in zinc biochemistry, I would like to add a few personal memories and anecdotes about Bert Vallee. For fifteen years from 1955 to 1970, including a sabbatical year, 1965/1966, I worked with Vallee, mostly by long-distance exchange and enjoyed his company. The long sabbatical visit gave rise to our thoughts on the entatic state published in 1968. He was a highly intelligent and cultured man, sensibly taking relaxation in good food and horse riding. The beginning of his career as an analyst in mass spectrometry and flame photometry was broken by the death Ibrutinib of his professor at MIT. Vallee was left as a science orphan with a research interested

not shared by any in MIT or Harvard. How he came to have a laboratory in a Harvard hospital basement I do not know but he had to refurbish and re-equip it with little assistance. A darker side of his character was surely reinforced by this experience. As I knew him he was suspicious of the motives of others, even in 1955, as I have explained in my own case in the introduction. PRKACG He was not without friends however and I remember having lunch with Bert and one of them, Professor Eric Ball. The lunch was particularly memorable for a remark made by Eric who had listened kindly to our two very different ways of hoping to develop bioinorganic chemistry. He said, “If you two stick together you will be unstoppable.” We tried but in the end we failed — I think for a simple reason. If you worked with Bert, no matter at what level, he demanded or asked for loyalty and that we all remained secretive about our work. A great disappointment for me was that this threw a shadow over his work in the eyes of the biochemistry community. For example Bert refused to have anything to do with Lipscomb, whom I knew well, who had the crystal structure of carboxypeptidase, “Bert’s” enzyme in his own eyes. Away from his science Bert was warm, open, enjoyed witty conversation and was not afraid of jokes against himself.