Speciation of mercury, methylmercury, ethylmercury and phenylmercury by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy of whole bacterial cells

Interactions of living bacterial cells with several mercury species are characterized by performing FT-IR spectroscopy of whole cells. Cultures of the Escherichia coli strain K-12 were grown in a glucose culture medium. The presence of the toxicants at various concentrations in the culture media also have an affect on the FT-IR spectra. The relative intensities of several peaks vary quite dramatically as a function of the mercury species. These variations are taken into account when FT-IR spectroscopy is used for speciation analysis.