Speciation of bound and free metals evaluated for lobster digestive gland extracts

A simple method is described for the speciation of metalions in biological extracts with a short desalting gel-filtration column. The system was optimized for the eluent and gel type to provide accurate free metal ion levels and minimum processing times. The four separation media studied were Sephadex G25, Bio-Gel P-6DG, controlled pore glass CPG40, and Fractogel HW40F. The best medium was the Fractogel HW40F because it was not compressible and allowed a pump to be used to obtain uniform flow rates. The eluent was 0.10 M ammonium acetate/0.01 M citric acid adjusted to pH 7.0. This eluent minimized ion/gel interactions and gave a lower salt content relative to other possible eluents. The separation time was 10 min per sample per metal ion of interest. The detection limits relative to the mass of wet tissue for the column/flame spectrometer system were 0.80 μg g^?1, 0.80 μg g^?1, and 1.6 μg g^?1 for zinc, cadmium and copper, respectively. The method is evaluated for a lobster digestive gland extract; the methodology should be applicable to other systems containing nonlabile metal species.