Effects of Selenium on Metabolism of Mercuric Chloride

Abstract

The distribution of mercury and selenium in subcellular fractions was examined to see effects of selenium on metabolism of mercuric chloride in rats. The subcellular distribution of mercury and selenium was changed greatly with the concurrent administration of them and decreased in soluble fraction and increased in nuclei and debris fractions. We found an interesting result that 56% of mercury existed in soluble fraction with the administration of mercury alone and only 1% of mercury with the concurrent administration of mercury and selenium. In this point, the molar ratio of mercury to selenium was about 1 : 1 in nuclei and debris, mitochondria and microsomes fractions, respectively. Amount of mercury in nuclear fraction prepared by the method of Chanda and others with the concurrent administration of mercury and selenium, was 9 times that with the administration of mercury alone. Furthermore, insoluble nonhistone protein fraction from nuclear fraction had 60% of mercury and in this fraction, amount of mercury per mg protein with the concurrent administration of mercury and selenium was about 13 times that with the administration of mercury alone. The behavior of mercury and selenium was also examined in the plasma. It was considered that mercury and selenium accumulated with the ratio of 1 : 1 in the plasma. We found that the gel filtration pattern of mercury in plasma protein on Sephadex G-200 chromatography was changed greatly and most of mercury was accumulated in some protein of high molecular fraction with the concurrent administration of mercury and selenium.