The bioinorganic chemistry of tungsten

Tungsten is widely distributed in biology, however, the majority of the tungsten-containing enzymes purified to date, originates from anaerobic archaea and bacteria. Tungsten coordination complexes incorporated in these enzymes can be studied with similar analytical and spectroscopic techniques as tungsten model compounds. The metal is taken up by cells in the form of tungstate, and subsequently it is processed into a sulfur-rich coordination as part of a metal-organic cofactor referred to as tungstopterin, which is equivalent to the molybdopterin forms found as active centers in several molybdenum-containing enzymes. For biology tungsten is significantly different from molybdenum and this review focuses on the (bio)molecular basis of this differential cellular use of W compared to Mo in terms of their active transport, cofactor synthesis, and functioning as catalytically active sites.