Week 3: Solutions

I continued to study the manganese ligand solutions this week. We are waiting for one last chemical to come in before we can start measuring superoxide, but we are hoping to be able to begin that next week. I learned more procedures for making manganese solutions, including manganese pyrophosphate, which is a pink solution, and manganese desferoxamine, which is dark green.

One of my favorite aspects of my research this summer has been the interesting colors of all the solutions. The solutions in the picture show some of the colors I’ve gotten to see. The blue one on the far left is manganese with a 2,3-dihydrobenzoic acid ligand. The next solution, formaldoxime, is red, which is hard to see in the photo, and it is used to measure the total concentration of manganese in a solution. The yellow solution in the middle is manganese with a tiron ligand. The navy blue solution is manganese pyrophosphate with leucoberbolin blue (LBB) added to it. Manganese pyrophosphate by itself is pink, but the LBB reacts with it to change the color, which remains stable for at least a few days. The pink solution, which is Amplex Red, turns clear after a few hours. We tested six different manganese ligands with LBB: manganese oxalate, pyruvate, pyrophosphate, tiron, 2,3-dihydrobenzoic aid, and citrate. It was interesting to see how some solutions turned blue when I added LBB and some did not.