Metalloid elements chemical speciation

Another key factor in the popularity of the technique is its increasingly widespread use in speciation chemistry. The current awareness of the importance of the chemical form in which an element is present in food (e.g., the oxidation state, the nature of the ligands, and the molecular structure), on its possible absorption and fate inside the body, has made elemental speciation a prominent topic of present research in the food science. If speciation critically influences the bioavailability, essentiality, or toxicity of an element, the analytical techniques that enable species discrimination and quantification gather prominence. ICP-MS has the capability for quantifying metal (metalloid)-containing species in a chromatographic or capillary electrophoresis effluent or, as recently demonstrated, in a gel spot after SDS-PAGE via electrothermal vaporization (ETV) or laser ablation (LA) [4, 5]. Hence, it has firmly established as a sensitive,... 

Hunter DB, Bertsch PM, Kemner KM, Clark SB (1997) Distribution and chemical spedation of metals and metalloids in biota collected from contaminated environments by spatially resolved XRF, XANES, and EXAFS. Journal de Physique IV France 7 767-771 Ice GE (1996) Microbeam forming methods for synchrotron radiation. X-ray Spectrum 26 315-326 Jackson BP, Shaw-Allen P, Hopkins WA, Bertsch PM (2002) Trace element speciation in largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides) from a fly ash settling basin by liquid chromatography-ICP-MS. Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry, in press... 

The definition of metallome and metallomics should be seen in the context of speciation of an element (as mentioned above which was defined by lUPAC as the distribution of an element amongst defined chemical species in a system), but distinguished by consideration of the global role of all metals/metalloids in a system. In speciation analysis, analytical activities of identifying and/or measuring the quantities of one or more individual chemical species in a sample, narrowed to metallobiomolecules, can be referred to as metallomics. In other words, metallomics can be considered as a subset (referring to cellular biochemistry) of speciation analysis understood as the identification and/or quantification of elemental species. 

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