Emphasizing the Toxicity of Heavy Metal Ions on Plants: Monitoring with an Amino Acids Assay

Abstract

In order to emphasize modifications on living organisms resulted from interaction with heavy metals, we applied a simple, sensitive, quick, inexpensive and reproducible method. It evaluates modifications through determining released amino acids. This method comprises three stages: treating plants with the investigated heavy metals, extracting resulted amino acids and dosing them with a ninhydrin reagent. The colored solution resulted from ninhydrin dosing is spectrophotometrically measured at 516 nm. The Lambert-Beer law is valid within the concentration field of 0-20 μg mL^–1.

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