Adam, V. ; Horák, V. ; Húska, D. ; Kaiser, J. ; Kanický, V. ; Kizek, R. ; Křížková, S. ; Novotný, K. ; Strnadel, J. ; Vaculovič, T. ; Zítka, O.
Metallomics and metalloproteomics are emerging fields addressing the role, uptake, transport and storage of trace metals essential for life. There are several main approaches that are being developed in metallomics and metalloproteomics including both detection of levels and spatial distribution of heavy metals and determination of heavy-metal-contained proteins. The aim of this work is detection of copper and zinc in healthy and tumour tissues of miniature pigs by using of the laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS). Concentration of heavy metal transporting protein metallothionein (MT) was determined by Brdicka reaction. Tissue cryosections were obtained from the MeLiM strain of miniature pigs with hereditary melanoma, particularly from healthy skin, cutaneous nodular melanomas and metastases in the liver, spleen and lymph nodes. Using LIBS we measured maps of spatial distribution of the essential heavy metals in cryosections and found that the maps of healthy and tumour cryosection markedly differed. The highest content of MT was determined in the tumours localised on the back of animals and was nearly 500 ug of MT per gram of tissue.