Amino acids are possible to form stable coordination complexes with variety metal ions and cysteine is no exception. Thiol groups of cysteine are well known to have strong interaction with mercury (Hg2+). A variety of researches for cysteine interaction with Hg2+ in aqueous solution have been developed. Hg2+ which is one of the representative heavy transition-metal has a diverse unique binding. Because sulfur atoms have an extremely high affinity for Hg2+, Hg2+ is possible to form metallic complex compound or enable to desulfurization when it react with compounds containing sulfur. For this reason, interaction of Hg2+ and cysteine is possible to apply various field of study. It also has been reported that mercury shows high selectivity for thymine (T) in DNA bases, owing to the formation of T-Hg2+-T complexes. This phenomenon has been utilized to develop highly selective Hg2+ detection through the visible and fluorescence color change.In this report, we have prepared novel water-soluble conjugated polymer-Hg2+-T complex. The complex which formed a facile method without intramolecular acceptor, used specific interactions with Hg2+, has a highly selectivity of cysteine in aqueous solution.

Highly selective cysteine detection: Fluorescence color change of water-soluble conjugated polymer based complex by mercury capturing

241st National Meeting (2011)

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