Cyanide reaction with ninhydrin has been recommended for instant detection of small traces of cyanide (detection limit 1.5 ng ml-1). However, pH and UV and visible light might induce errors. Therefore, we investigated the effect of pH, UV and visible radiation on cyanide reaction with ninhydrin in order to increase the method robustness. Cyanide can be determined with ninhydrin either at 485 nm or 590 nm, without any color interference.

The development of radio protective agents with lower toxicity and an extended window of protection has attracted much attention. Glutathione and a new synthesized decapeptide (P10) were used to investigate the protective effect of cysteine peptides. Besides, P10 was characterized by mass spectrometry, atomic force microscopy and circular dichroism spectroscopy. Then, the accumulation and the effect of radioactive mercury on wheat seedlings (Triticum

Iron and other metal ions appear to play an important role in protein aggregation and are therefore likely to provide a link between protein aggregation and oxidative damage. This work reports on iron binding to amyloid-beta peptide (Abeta1-40), which affords a very specific electrospray ionization mass spectrometric (MS) spectrum. Both MS and MS/MS study confirmed that amyloid beta-peptide displays a high affinity toward iron(III) ions, producing

The stoichiometries and the affinity toward simple and paired metal ions of synthetic amyloid-beta(1-40) peptide (Abeta1-40) were investigated by electrospray ion trap mass spectrometry (ESI-MS), circular dichroism CD), and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The results lead to the working hypothesis that pH-dependent metal binding to Abeta 1-40 may induce conformational changes, which affect the affinity toward other metals. A significant copper and

Solid phase synthetic methodology has been used to prepare four peptides which form a system able to monitor metal ion binding to conformationally different peptides. The 19-residues oligopeptides containing histidine residues in various positions of Ala or Gly sequences, namely GGGGHGGGGHGGGGHGGGG, GGGHGGGHG GGHGGGGGGG, AAAAHAAAAHAAAA-HAAAA, and AAAHAAAHAAAHAAAAAAA have been synthesized by Fmoc strategy and characterized by Fourier transform infrared