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Updated: May 25, 2026

Essential Metal Uptake in Gram-negative Bacteria: X-ray Fluorescence, Radioisotopes, and Cell Fractionation
Published on: February 1, 2018
Non-essential metals in chemical biology
1Institut des Sciences et Ingénierie Chimiques, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland. paul.dyson@epfl.ch
Abstract:
Metal ions and compounds are essential to life and many people routinely take them as food supplements in the form of vitamin and mineral pills. Most non-essential metals are considered to be toxic, nevertheless, many are widely used in imaging, diagnostics and medicine. This short review provides an overview from selected examples of the on-going research within my laboratory that uses metal compounds to either understand biological processes or that exhibit therapeutic properties overcoming the limitations of existing chemotherapies.
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