Development of enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for the detection of Hg (II)

An indirect competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (IC-ELISA) was developed for the rapid detection of Hg (II) . As the mercury ion was not immunogenic, so mercury was linked to the keyhole limpet hemocyanin (KLH) with 1- (4-isothiocyanobenzyl) ethylenediamine -N, N, N', N'-tetraacetic acid (ITCBE) as immunogen. For the developed ELISA, the limit of detection and sensitivity were 0.45μg/L and 4.10μg/L, respectively. The cross-reactivity against other metals were all low, except for copper and nickel, which had10.8%, 13.5% corss-reactivity, respectively. The recoveries of dahurica, carrot and Pipi shrimp sample were ranging from 70% to 120%. The accuracy of the developed IC-ELISA method was validated by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) . The developed ELISA for dahurica sample showed high correlation with ICP-MS (the correlation coefficients were 0.988) . Thus, it was demonstrated that the established immunoassay for the detection of Hg (II) was reliable.