Title: Principles and Applications of Selective Recognition of Rare Earth Elements in Biology.

Abstract:

The discovery that certain lanthanides are specifically utilized by biological systems has catalyzed the development of novel biochemistry-based strategies for selective detection, recovery, and separation of rare earth elements (the lanthanides, plus yttrium and scandium) and actinides. In this talk, I will describe my group’s discovery of several dedicated lanthanide-binding proteins and the insights that characterization of these systems has yielded into the coordination chemistry and supramolecular chemistry underlying biology’s ability to differentiate between lanthanides. Finally, I will illustrate how the principles illuminated by these natural systems can be leveraged for sustainable, biomolecule-based separation processes, towards the holy grail of efficient separation of adjacent lanthanides