Emphasizing the Toxicity of Heavy Metal ions on Plants: Monitoring with an Amino Acids Assay

Abstract

In order to emphasize modifications on living organisms resulted from interaction with heavy metals, we applied a simple, sensitive, quick, inexpensive and reproducible method. It evaluates modifications through determining released amino acids. This method comprises three stages: treating plants with the investigated heavy metals, extracting resulted amino acids and dosing them with a ninhydrin reagent. The colored solution resulted from ninhydrin dosing is spectrophotometrically measured at 516nm. The Lambert-Beer law is valid within the concentration field of 0-20 μg mL–1.