IMR Press / FBL / Volume 11 / Issue 3 / DOI: 10.2741/1954

Frontiers in Bioscience-Landmark (FBL) is published by IMR Press from Volume 26 Issue 5 (2021). Previous articles were published by another publisher on a subscription basis, and they are hosted by IMR Press on imrpress.com as a courtesy and upon agreement with Frontiers in Bioscience.

Article
Development of ELISA for metallothionein-II allows determination of heavy metal pollution of fresh water
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1 National Laboratory of Protein Engineering and Plant Genetic Engineering, College of Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
2 Department of Toxicology, Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Osaka University, 1-6 Yamada-oka, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan
Front. Biosci. (Landmark Ed) 2006, 11(3), 2113–2122; https://doi.org/10.2741/1954
Published: 1 September 2006
Abstract

Metallothionein (MT), a metal-binding protein induced primarily by heavy metals in vertebrates, is considered a biomarker for environmental heavy-metal contamination. To investigate heavy metal pollution in the freshwater environment, MT-I and MT-II were purified from livers of crucian carp (Carassius carassius) by gel exclusion chromatography and ion exchange chromatography. To detect the purified MT-II, a specific monoclonal antibody (mAb) against crucian carp MT-II was produced from the hybridoma strains by cell-cell fusion. By using Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) with this mAb, the purified crucian carp MT-II was detected with a high specificity and sensitivity. There was a good correlation between the amount of MT-II in carp livers and the concentration of heavy metals in water. ELISA was then used to evaluated the degree of heavy metal pollution in two freshwater systems. The results indicate that the MT-II content in carp liver tissue can be used as an indicator of environmental heavy-metal pollution.

Keywords
Metallothionein
heavy metal pollution
ELISA
monoclonal antibody
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