ANYL 109 |
| Contaminations of freshwaters due to the natural proliferation of toxic cyanobacteria are a phenomenon of increased worldwide concern. Microcystis are one of the most common species among these toxic cyanobacteria. These toxins are found responsible for chronic hepatotoxicity, tumour promoters and potential carcinogenic. Their toxicity has been recently regulated by the World Health Organization, establishing a regulatory limit in drinking water of 1 µg/L. The control of the presence of these toxins in contaminated samples at these low levels make the development of sensitive analytical techniques an important challenge, on the other hand, the development of fast and efficient techniques should be also an important achievement for screening and routine monitoring, therefore this work focused in the development of an ELISA which conditions have been optimised in order to find detection limits under the named regulatory levels established by the WHO. Monoclonal antibodies, raised against microcystins LR were used for the development of these ELISA and with this aim MC-LR was conjugated with different molecules and in different ways in order to get the optimal ELISA and consequently the optimal response for an efficient screening of these toxins. Parameters such as: quantity of Mab anti-MCLR, hapten-tracer (MCLR-HRP), blocking reagents in buffers system and matrix effect were also optimized and these optimal conditions were applied for the determination of microcystins in naturally contaminated samples. The efficiency of the ELISA methods developed was evaluated by comparing the results obtained with the ones obtained by HPLC/UV analysis being this technique the most widely used for this purpose. The results obtained with both techniques were in good correlation, which demonstrated the potential of the ELISA developed in this work for a reliable, fast and efficient screening of microcystins in naturally contaminated samples from different matrices. *) Corresponding author (anagago@uvigo.es) |
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General Posters
7:00 PM-9:00 PM, Sunday, August 19, 2007 BCEC -- Exhibit Hall - B2, Poster
Division of Analytical Chemistry |