Almost all heavy metals are serious toxicants as carcinogens. However, due to their chemical and physiological properties, heavy metals are useful in industrial areas including alloy, smelting and production of commercial products. Such applications increase the opportunity for heavy metal exposure. Waste from industrial processes is also a major source of environmental contamination and accumu...

Plants respond to heavy-metal toxicity via a number of mechanisms. One such mechanism involves the chelation of heavy metals by a family of peptide ligands, the phytochelatins. Molecular genetic approaches have resulted in important advances in our understanding of phytochelatin biosynthesis. In particular, genes encoding the enzyme phytochelatin synthase have been isolated from plant and yeast...

Previous studies have indicated that heavy metal exposure can have an effect on the central nervous system. However, research has been inadequate to fully support this claim. The aim of this work was to determine the toxic effects of heavy metal ions including Fe, Fe, Hg, Mn, Cd, Mg, and Pb on nerve cells (e.g. PC12). PC12 cells were incubated with the metal ions at four concentrations, i.e. 12...

Inhibition of the respiration microbial activity in the activated sludge caused by heavy metal concentrations (Cr, Cd, Cu and Ni) was studied by means of respirometric method using Strathtox respirometer (Strathkelvin Glasgow).The studied sludge samples were obtained from the two waste water treatment plants with different types of pollution (municipal waste water and domestic waste water). Key...

Obtaining phase information for the solution of macromolecular structures is still one of the bottlenecks in X-ray crystallography. 5-Amino-2,4,6-triiodoisophthalic acid (I3C), in which three covalently bound iodines form an equilateral triangle, was incorporated into proteins in order to obtain phases by single-wavelength anomalous dispersion (SAD). An improved binding capability compared with...

Not all heavy metals are toxic. Some at lower concentrations are essential to the physiological status of the organism. Under certain conditions, induced toxicity occurs when the heavy metals are in the form of cations which tends to bind to certain biomolecules, thus becoming toxic to organisms. In many industries, toxic heavy metals such as As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Hg, Pb and Zn, are released mainly i...

The toxicity of heavy metals, which is associated with the high affinity of the metals for thiolate rich proteins, constitutes a problem worldwide. However, despite this tremendous toxicity concern, the binding mode of As(III) and Pb(II) to proteins is poorly understood. To clarify the requirements for toxic metal binding to metalloregulatory sensor proteins such as As(III) in ArsR/ArsD and ...

Heavy metals are one of the most important factors among many others in biosphere pollution. Mobility and toxicity of metals associated with bottom sediments are generally affected by metal speciation and sediments compositions. The aims of this study were to investigated the distribution of metal speciation in sediment collected from Rybnik dam reservoir and to asses their toxicity for aquatic...

Heavy metals released into the surface and ground water has been a major preoccupation for many years because of their increased discharge, acute toxicity, non-biodegradable nature and tendency for bioaccumulation [1-3]. Iron a common contaminant enters the water bodies through effluents of industries such as electroplating, mining, steel processing etc. The presence of Fe (II) in water results...

Heavy metals are potentially toxic to human life and the environment. Metal toxicity depends on chemical associations in soils. For this reason, determining the chemical form of a metal in soils is important to evaluate its mobility and hioavailability . Sequential extraction was used to fractionate four heavy metals (Cd, Cu, Ni, and Zn) from nine contaminated soils into six operationally defin...