Quantification of chelatable iron in biological tissue by electron spin spectroscopy

The present paper deals with the procedure of a quantitative determination of chelatable iron in biological microsamples (20-50 mg) using an electron spin resonance technique based on the iron incorporation into the stable iron (III)-desferrioxamine B complexes. The conclusion is, that the method developed is valuable one to characterize the availability of iron from different sources. Using the method developed, the share of iron outside the protein core was shown to be less then 0.5 percentages of the whole iron content in the horse spleen ferritin suspension with 100 mg protein per ml and average iron content of 810 iron atoms per protein molecule. For a set of tissue samples taken from internal organs and brain of mice, rats and rabbits the data on chelatable iron concentration have been obtained.