Spectrophotometric Analysis of Cysteine Interaction with Heavy Metal Salts

The contamination from heavy metals has been rising from the last decade due to increase in industrialization. The heavy metals are toxic for living organisms. The accumulation of heavy metals may lead to severe health problems. Many drugs are known to remove heavy metals from living organisms but sometime they may be destructive. The need-of-the-hour; however is to evolve procedures for removal of heavy metals. There is a need to design a drug which has no ill effects. The present study describes an effective and friendly approach to explore the removal of heavy metals using cysteine. The study involves possible potential of designing drug containing cysteine to remove heavy metals. Cysteine is the one of the most reactive amino acid found in proteins due to presence of sulfhydryl (SH) group. It accumulates a large numbers of heavy metals. This study suggests the metal interactions of cysteine with heavy metals such as Murcury, Cobalt, Zinc, Copper and Cadmium etc. The interactions were monitored by using UV-VIS spectrophotometer.