{"id":235098,"date":"2026-04-13T23:31:57","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T04:31:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/a-new-chapter-in-chemistry-scientists-uncover-new-way-metals-bind-oxygen"},"modified":"2026-04-13T23:31:57","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T04:31:57","slug":"a-new-chapter-in-chemistry-scientists-uncover-new-way-metals-bind-oxygen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/a-new-chapter-in-chemistry-scientists-uncover-new-way-metals-bind-oxygen","title":{"rendered":"A New Chapter in Chemistry? Scientists Uncover New Way Metals Bind Oxygen"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/a-new-chapter-in-chemistry-scientists-uncover-new-way-metals-bind-oxygen.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Iron plays a central role in how the body uses oxygen. In hemoglobin, it binds dioxygen, a pair of oxygen atoms, allowing blood to carry oxygen to tissues. But this is only part of the story. Iron-oxo compounds, which contain iron bonded to oxygen in a highly reactive form, also drive critical chemistry in the liver, where enzymes rely on them to break down medications and toxins.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/scitechdaily.com\/tag\/rice-university\/\">Rice University<\/a> chemist Ra\u00fal Hern\u00e1ndez S\u00e1nchez set out to explore whether oxygen could react with other metals, particularly those in the lowest region of the periodic table known as the f-block. This group includes lanthanides in the upper row and actinides below.<\/p>\n<p>He proposed that if lanthanides could bond with oxygen, they might form reactive lanthanide-oxo compounds. These compounds could serve as synthetic alternatives to iron-oxo systems and give chemists new ways to study small-molecule reactions linked to biology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Iron plays a central role in how the body uses oxygen. In hemoglobin, it binds dioxygen, a pair of oxygen atoms, allowing blood to carry oxygen to tissues. But this is only part of the story. Iron-oxo compounds, which contain iron bonded to oxygen in a highly reactive form, also drive critical chemistry in the [\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-235098","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\/235098","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=235098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235098\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}