Abstract
The isolation of a mercury compound was attempted from bedsediments of Itomuka pond near the upper stream of Tokoro river locating in the north Hokkaido, into which waste water of the mercurial mine was drained and so the organic mercury compound appears to be generated in the sediments. The mercury compound was extracted with 0.1 N NaOH, salted out with NaCl and isolated by Sephadex G-100 and G-200 gel filtration from the sediment, according to the procedure of extraction of humic substance. The purity of the compound was confirmed by TLC and electrophoresis. The compound was characterized by UV and IR spectra, element analysis, molecular weight estimation and amino acid analysis. The data suggested that the compound is a polypeptide with the molecular weight of 100, 000 daltons and that mercury makes a complex with it.
