Metal complexes of amino acids and peptides

This chapter deals with the most results reported for various aspects of complex formation processes of simple amino acids, peptides and related substances in the last two years, in 2014 and 2015. The major results and conclusions of more than 400 papers are included in this chapter indicating the great variety of research in this field. In the case of metal complexes of amino acids, in addition to the traditional equilibrium, kinetic and structural investigations a significant increase can be observed in the number of theoretical, gas phase and mass spectrometric studies. For peptides, the sequences of the molecules were selected as the guiding principle for the discussion of results with a special emphasis on the complexes containing histidyl and cysteinyl residues. Various conjugates of amino acids and peptides with other biologically important organic molecules opened new strategies in medicinal chemistry which are also discussed together with the other applications of these metal complexes.