Date of Award:

5-1960

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

Chemistry and Biochemistry

Committee Chair(s)

Jack T. Spence

Committee

Jack T. Spence

Abstract

Molybdenum may function as a catalyst in promoting and controlling some of the complex chemical reactions that go on in living systems. The lack of understanding which exists about these reactions is due to their obvious complexity and to the extremely minute quantities of molybdenum involved. Traces of molybdenum have been shown to have spectacular results on the growth of plants when added to certain soils. This metal is also required for the growth of azobacter, the nitrogen-fixing bacteria (1).

Molybdenum has been shown to be present in four enzymes: nitrate reductase (2), hydrogenase (3), xanthine oxidase (4) and aldehyde oxidase (5). In each of these enzymes riboflavin is also present as the co-enzyme FAD (flavin-adenine dinucleotide) and it seems reasonable that the molybdenum may be complexed with riboflavin although there is no evidence to confirm this.

Riboflavin has been shown to form chelates with other metals such as iron, copper, nickel, cobalt and zinc (6). Molybdenum, on the other hand, has been shown to complex in the oxidation state of (V) and (VI) with a number of organic compounds such as mannitol (7, 8, 9, 10), amino acids (11), methylene blue (12), 8-hydroxyquinoline (13), EDTA (ethylene-diaminetetreacetic acid) (14) and ATP (adenosine triphosphate) (15). There has been, however, little work done on the formation and study of molybdenum complexes with important biochemical compounds. There is no quantitative data available on the stability constants for any molybdenum complex (16), and an urgent need for such information exists (17).

If biological systems may be thought of as areas in which the metallic ions present are competed for by the various complex forming agents present, it is obvious that a knowledge of the avidity of each naturally occurring complex-forming compound for the different metals present in biological systems is quite desirable in order to elucidate the mechanism of the biological reactions in which the metals are involved.

A study of the interaction of molybdenum, in both (V) and (VI) valence states, with riboflavin therefore appeared to be of considerable interest.

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