Major advances in separation science and organic and inorganic mass spectrometry have led to the birth of a new research area at the interface between Bio-Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry - summarised as "Metallomics" (see: RSC journal Metallomics). The word "Metallome" was first coined by Prof. R.J.P. Williams, one of the most eminent Bio-Inorganic Chemists. It signifies the entirety of metal ions (and metalloid species) within a biological system.

A sub-discipline of Metallomics is Metalloproteomics. Benefiting from the excellent research facilities here at Warwick, we are working on developing analytical methods that will allow us to determine major destinations for selected metal ions in a variety of organisms (see: Protein fractionation and detection for metalloproteomics: challenges and approaches, and Fractionation and identification of metalloproteins from a marine cyanobacterium),

See also: James Barnett's homepage

We are also interested in improving approaches for understanding and predicting metal specificity of metal-trafficking proteins (See: Zinc handling in cyanobacteria: An update and Cytosolic metal handling in plants: determinants for zinc specificity in metal transporters and metallothioneins).