Caeruloplasmin, July 2003 MOTM

Caeruloplasmin was destined as 'Molecule of the Month' for February 2003. However we decided to move this momentous event until July since that would be after Caroline had finished her MSci degree (she was awarded a 2.1), also, I will retire from Bristol University at the end of the month. The site contains some unpublished material from Caroline's thesis. There is always room for improvement of a Web Site, so bookmark this one. In particular we hope to supply JCAMP examples of spectra to embelish the spectroscopy section.

Thanks

To Paul May, Webmaster for the School of Chemistry, and currently riding elephants somewhere in Thailand. Paul started the MOTM series, and the idea spawned a lot of OTMs all over the Web. We found a 'Lobster of the Month', blue of course, for this site.

Especial thanks to Colin Bolton (now retired from Southmead Hospital) who unwittingly started my interest in ceruloplasmin! To the Bristol Heart Institute for their support of Caroline's work, and to Nilima Shukla and Jamie Jeremy of the BHI for their enthusiam to find out more about 'the copper chameleon'.

To the many researchers who have contributed to starting our understanding of the molecular structure, and functions associated with those properties, for caeruloplasmin. However we are a little uncertain about the use of the word 'moonlighting' by biochemists as applied to proteins, the OED defines this as:
The performance by night of an expedition or of an illicit action

To the people at MDL who wrote the Chime software, and without which producing displays and images of caeruloplasmin would have been very difficult. But, please can we have a Chime version for OSX on Macs?

John Maher,
School of Chemistry,
University of Bristol,
July 2003