Determination of Heavy Metal Content: Arsenic, Cadmium, Mercury, and Lead in Cyano-Phycocyanin Isolated from the Cyanobacterial Biomass
2023
Daiva Galinytė | Gabrielė Balčiūnaitė-Murzienė | Jūratė Karosienė | Dmitrij Morudov | Rima Naginienė | Dalė Baranauskienė | Jurgita Šulinskienė | Ieva Kudlinskienė | Arūnas Savickas | Nijolė Savickienė
Cyano-phycocyanin (C-PC) is a light-absorbing biliprotein found in cyanobacteria, commonly known as blue-green algae. Due to its antioxidative, anti-inflammatory, and anticancer properties, this protein is a promising substance in medicine and pharmaceuticals. However, cyanobacteria tend to bind heavy metals from the environment, making it necessary to ensure the safety of C-PC for the development of pharmaceutical products, with C-PC isolated from naturally collected cyanobacterial biomass. This study aimed to determine the content of the most toxic heavy metals, arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), mercury (Hg), and lead (Pb) in C-PC isolated from different cyanobacterial biomasses collected in the Kaunas Lagoon during 2019–2022, and compare them with the content of heavy metals in C-PC isolated from cultivated <i>Spirulina platensis</i> (<i>S. platensis</i>). Cyanobacteria of <i>Aphanizomenon flos-aquae</i> (<i>A. flos-aquae</i>) dominated the biomass collected in 2019, while the genus <i>Microcystis</i> dominated the biomasses collected in the years 2020 and 2022. Heavy metals were determined using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). ICP-MS analysis revealed higher levels of the most investigated heavy metals (Pb, Cd, and As) in C-PC isolated from the biomass with the dominant <i>Microcystis</i> spp. compared to C-PC isolated from the biomass with the predominant <i>A. flos-aquae</i>. Meanwhile, C-PC isolated from cultivated <i>S. platensis</i> exhibited lower concentrations of As and Pb than C-PC isolated from naturally collected cyanobacterial biomass.
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