Most modern applications require the use of synchrotron radiation as a tunable and high spectral brightness source of X-rays. X-ray fluorescence imaging is a powerful technique that can be used to determine elemental and chemical species distributions at a range of spatial resolutions within samples of biological tissues. (12) Understanding the localization, speciation, and distribution of these at various length scales is of significant interest.Ī wide variety of heavier elements can be probed by X-ray spectroscopic methods these are shown graphically in Figure 1.

Likewise, an increasing number of pharmaceuticals include metals or heavier elements such chemotherapeutic drugs include the platinum derivatives cisplatin and carboplatin, (10) some promising new ruthenium drugs, (11) and arsenic trioxide, which has been used to treat promyelocytic leukemia. (9) The mechanisms of action of toxic elements such as mercury and arsenic are also of interest, as are essential nonmetal trace elements, such as selenium. (6) For example, Menke’s disease and Occipital Horn Syndrome, (7) and Wilson’s disease, (8) involve disruption in copper uptake and excretion, respectively, through mutation in the ATP7A and ATP7B Cu transporters. Furthermore, diseases of metal dysregulation can cause disruption in the distribution of metals. Metals play essential and central roles in the most important and chemically challenging processes required for life, with active site structures and mechanisms that, at the time of their discovery, have usually not yet been duplicated in the chemical laboratory. The ability to derive the spatial distribution of elements on this diversity of length scales is a key to understanding their function. Living organisms have an inherent and very rich physical structure, with relevant length scales ranging from the nanometer scale for subcellular structure to hundreds of micrometers and above for tissue, organ, or organism-level organization. (4) With inclusion of the s-block metals such as Na, K, Mg, and Ca, the proportion likely approaches 100% recent estimates from the protein data bank indicate that the prevalence of heavier metal ions of atomic number above 20 within proteins is around 22%, (5) with Zn 2+ proteins alone constituting about 11%. (1-3) Moreover, recent reports suggest that, at least in some cases, there are many uncharacterized metalloproteins. It is widely agreed that a large fraction of the genomic output of living things contains metal or metalloid ions, although estimates of this fraction vary widely and depend upon which metal ions are considered. From the perspective of a chemist, biology confers a rich variety of roles on a number of metal ions.

Team z motor plate with adc