{"id":235000,"date":"2026-04-11T02:18:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T07:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/scientists-discover-f-block-metals-yield-new-oxygen-binding-chemistry"},"modified":"2026-04-11T02:18:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T07:18:09","slug":"scientists-discover-f-block-metals-yield-new-oxygen-binding-chemistry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/scientists-discover-f-block-metals-yield-new-oxygen-binding-chemistry","title":{"rendered":"Scientists discover f-block metals yield new oxygen-binding chemistry"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/scientists-discover-f-block-metals-yield-new-oxygen-binding-chemistry.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Iron and oxygen bind together throughout the body. Most famously, iron binds dioxygen, or two oxygens paired with each other, in hemoglobin that transports oxygen through blood. But iron-oxo compounds, as they\u2019re called, are found in many other places throughout the body. For example, the highly reactive iron-oxo is used in liver enzymes that metabolize drugs.<\/p>\n<p>Rice University chemist Ra\u00fal Hern\u00e1ndez S\u00e1nchez was interested in how oxygen could react with other types of metals\u2014ones that reside on the lowest section of the periodic table, known as f-block metals, with lanthanides on the upper row and actinides on the lower.<\/p>\n<p>If lanthanides could bind with oxygen, he theorized, it would form a highly reactive lanthanide-oxo compound that potentially could be used as a synthetic replacement for iron-oxo, opening up a new toolbox for small molecule chemists interested in studying these biological reactions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Iron and oxygen bind together throughout the body. Most famously, iron binds dioxygen, or two oxygens paired with each other, in hemoglobin that transports oxygen through blood. But iron-oxo compounds, as they\u2019re called, are found in many other places throughout the body. For example, the highly reactive iron-oxo is used in liver enzymes that metabolize [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-235000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-chemistry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235000\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}