title: Screening mercury levels in fish with a selective fluorescent chemosensor.
abstract: Societal concerns over toxic mercury accumulation in humans from fish and other dietary and environmental sources provide motivation to develop new tools and tactics for mercury detection in a wide range of laboratory and field settings. Here we report the synthesis, properties, and application of a selective and sensitive small-molecule chemosensor for fluorescence screening of mercury levels in fish. Mercuryfluor-1 (MF1) is a water-soluble, fluorescein-based reagent that features excellent selectivity for Hg2+ over competing analytes and the largest turn-on fluorescence response to date (>170-fold increase) for reporting this heavy metal ion in aqueous solution. Combining this chemoselective Hg2+ probe with a microwave digestion protocol provides a facile method for assaying mercury levels in fish samples with mercury concentrations spanning 0.1 to 8 ppm, a range well matched with the United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) standard for the maximum safe level of mercury in edible fish (0.55 ppm).
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
authors.forename: Sungho
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Yoon
authors.forename: Aaron E
authors.initials: AE
authors.lastname: Albers
authors.forename: Audrey P
authors.initials: AP
authors.lastname: Wong
authors.forename: Christopher J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Chang
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005399:Fishes; D008628:Mercury / Q000032:analysis* / Q000737:chemistry*; D015394:Molecular Structure; D013050:Spectrometry, Fluorescence; D014966:Xanthenes / Q000032:analysis* / Q000138:chemical synthesis / Q000737:chemistry
chemical_list: D014966:Xanthenes; C507757:mercuryfluor-1; D008628:Mercury