My group has long-standing interests in transition metal homeostasis, particularly in bacterial pathogens, in processes that may well be important during infections. An important antimicrobial weapon employed by the infected host is nutritional immunity, where high affinity transition metal binding proteins are deployed to sites of infections in an effort to starve bacteria of transition metal nutrients, including iron, manganese and zinc. We are particularly interested in pathogen adaptation to zinc (and iron) restriction and have focused these studies on the Gram-negative ESKAPE pathogen, Acinetobacter baumannii. These studies have lead to the identification and characterization of GTP-hydrolysis powered zinc metallochaperones, which are proposed to deliver a specific metal to a specific or small subset of apo-enzyme “clients”, but only under conditions of nutritional zinc deficiency. Our progress toward understanding these specialized zinc metallochaperones, conserved from bacterial to man, as well as specific metabolic processes in A. baumannii that are negatively impacted by transition metal restriction will be discussed.