Investigation of the aluminium binding in Al(iii)-treated neuroblastoma cells

Abstract

Different hyphenated techniques have been employed for the first time for a comparative study of control and metal-exposed cell lines, one of the important research areas in the field of metallomics. Speciation of aluminium (an element implicated in a variety of neurological disorders) was investigated in neuroblastoma cells exposed to aluminium lactate by size-exclusion high-performance liquid chromatography-inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (SE-HPLC-ICP-MS) and capillary electrophoresis (CE-ICP-MS). Whereas in control cells the most intense Al compound co-eluted with the Al–transferrin complex, in size-exclusion chromatography, in exposed cells a low molecular weight bioligand was synthesized. The latter bound all the Al(III) metabolised by exposed cells in the form of a negatively-charged complex. This complex turned out to be more stable than the protein complex of Al(III) in control cells. The isolated low molecular weight Al species did not produce a signal in electrospray mass spectrometry (ES-MS) and its behaviour investigated by size-exclusion, reversed-phase HPLC and CE excluded its being hydroxide, citrate, phosphate or residual lactate from the culture medium.