A method for the rapid detection of heavy metal mercury ions based on a novel mercury chelator N,N'-bis (2-mercaptoethyl) isophthalamide

Yali Wang; Shuangbo Zhang; Jiang Bian; Joseph Brake; Chaoyang Luo; Chuanwen Sun; Xiaobin Wu

doi:10.1016/j.foodchem.2024.142486

A method for the rapid detection of heavy metal mercury ions based on a novel mercury chelator N,N'-bis (2-mercaptoethyl) isophthalamide

Food Chem. 2024 Dec 16:468:142486. doi: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2024.142486. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Yali Wang¹, Shuangbo Zhang², Jiang Bian³, Joseph Brake⁴, Chaoyang Luo², Chuanwen Sun⁵, Xiaobin Wu⁶

Affiliations

¹ Development Center of Plant Germplasm Resources, College of Life Sciences, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai 200234, China; Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Yulin University, Shaanxi 719000, China.
² Development Center of Plant Germplasm Resources, College of Life Sciences, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai 200234, China.
³ Development Center of Plant Germplasm Resources, College of Life Sciences, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai 200234, China; Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Shanghai Everjoy Medical Polyclinic, 675 Minbei Road, Shanghai 201107, China.
⁴ Department of Biological Chemistry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-0600, United States.
⁵ Development Center of Plant Germplasm Resources, College of Life Sciences, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai 200234, China. Electronic address: [email protected].
⁶ Development Center of Plant Germplasm Resources, College of Life Sciences, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai 200234, China. Electronic address: [email protected].

PMID: 39721482
DOI: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2024.142486

Abstract

Mercury has caused severe harm to the environment and human health. A novel biological screen method was developed and identified a Hg²⁺ chelator BDTH2. Both biological and chemical methods demonstrated BDTH2 displayed a high specificity and strong binding capacity for Hg²⁺. Toxicological experiments of BDTH2 demonstrated its good safety. To enhance the sensitivity, functional composite BDTH2-AuNPs were synthesized, and the system exhibited strong specificity to Hg²⁺ and excellent anti-interference capabilities. The optimized colorimetric method and the paper test strip method showed a visual detection limit of 3 nM less than 30 s and 5 nM within 1 min respectively. This system was evaluated for detecting spiked Hg²⁺ concentrations in environmental water and six agricultural food samples and showed high consistence with those of ICP-MS. Therefore, this study provides a novel, rapid, and economical method for on-site detecting of Hg²⁺ in water and agricultural products.

Keywords: BDTH2; Field test; Mercury ions; Rapid point-of-care testing; Test strips.