Department of Pharmacy, Biotechnology, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy.
Department of Pharmacy, Biotechnology, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy, National Institute of Biostructures, Biosystems (NIBB), Rome, Italy.
Magnes Res. 2020 Feb 1;33(1):1-11. doi: 10.1684/mrh.2020.0464.
The role of magnesium in cell metabolism is complex and still not completely clarified. Although magnesium has been shown to modulate many phenomena in cells, its intracellular distribution and subcellular compartmentalization have not yet elucidated in detail, mainly as a consequence of the inadequacy of analytical techniques. The method usually employed to quantify total magnesium in cells or tissue are F-AAS or more sensitive techniques as graphite furnace AAS and inductively coupled plasma mass spectroscopy (MS). Thanks to the development of new specific fluorescent dyes, several progresses have been made in the comprehension of the fundamental biological process at the cellular and sub-cellular level. Moreover, the biological function of a chemical element in cells does not only require the determination of its intracellular quantity but also the spatial distribution of its concentration. Most of Mg-sensitive fluorescent dyes detect only the free metal ions, precluding the possibility of identifying the total pool of Mg. This review aims at giving an overview on different techniques focusing on two approaches to quantify total Mg in a small cell population or in single cells: i) Indirect Mg detection, label-based methods that represent the best choice to quantify the elemental concentration on a large cell population; ii) direct Mg detection (label-free), Synchrotron-based x-ray microscopy techniques that offer the possibility of achieving a detailed map of the intracellular concentration of a specific chemical element on single cell.
镁在细胞代谢中的作用复杂，尚未完全阐明。尽管镁已被证明能调节细胞中的许多现象，但由于分析技术的不足，其细胞内分布和亚细胞区室化尚未详细阐明。通常用于定量细胞或组织中总镁的方法是火焰原子吸收光谱法（F-AAS）或更灵敏的技术，如石墨炉原子吸收光谱法和电感耦合等离子体质谱法（MS）。由于新的特异性荧光染料的发展，在理解细胞和亚细胞水平的基本生物学过程方面取得了一些进展。此外，细胞中化学元素的生物学功能不仅需要确定其细胞内数量，还需要确定其浓度的空间分布。大多数镁敏感荧光染料仅检测游离金属离子，从而排除了鉴定总镁池的可能性。本综述旨在概述不同的技术，重点介绍两种方法：i）间接镁检测，基于标记的方法，是定量大细胞群体中元素浓度的最佳选择；ii）直接镁检测（无标记），基于同步加速器的 X 射线显微镜技术，可实现单个细胞内特定化学元素的细胞内浓度的详细图谱。
