Abstract
Metal-binding chelators may interact with biological systems by either of two mechanisms: they may combine with an essential metal, which can be either freely dissociated or part of an enzyme prosthetic group, or they may react with a metal ion to form a biologically reactive metal–chelate complex1. As trace metals are always present as contaminants in serum-supplemented culture media used to study chelating agents, it is frequently difficult to distinguish between the two possibilities. Here we describe the use of a nontoxic, copper-specific chelating agent, bathocuproine sulphonate2,3 (Fig. 1) which, by combining with available endogenous copper in a tissue culture preparation, abolished the toxicity of three structurally unrelated chelating agents. These three agents may therefore be considered to be biologically active by the second mechanism.
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Mohindru, A., Fisher, J. & Rabinovitz, M. Bathocuproine sulphonate: a tissue culture-compatible indicator of copper-mediated toxicity. Nature 303, 64–65 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1038/303064a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/303064a0
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