A sensor for investigating the interaction between biologically important heavy metals and glutathione

Glutathione (GSH) is the water-soluble tripeptide playing a crucial role in number of cellular reactions including detoxification of heavy metals. Glutathione can be found both in oxidized (GSSG) and reduced (GSH) state. The aim of this work was to utilize the electrochemical methods for determining of glutathiones and for investigating interaction of GSH and cadmium, zinc, copper and nickel ions or food supplement for animal nutrition. It clearly follows from the results obtained that GSH and GSSG can be distinguished by cyclic voltammetry whereas the height of their current response is proportional to their concentration. Moreover, we were concerned with studying of these interactions by cyclic voltammetry. The markedly changes of GSH signal were observed and discussed. The highest decrease of GSH reductive signal cause cadmium ions followed by zinc, nickel and copper ones. Moreover we observed that reductive GSH signal gradually decreased (about 9 %) with increasing concentration of the feedstuff additive used in our experiments. In the conclusion, cyclic voltammetry offers a tool for studying of interaction of thiols with different substances such as heavy metals and/or feedstuff additives.