[Development of metallomics research on environmental toxicology]

Metallomics is newly coined terms and defined as a comprehensive analysis of the entirety of metal and metalloid species within a cell or tissue type. Then, metallome is defined as the entire category of metalloproteins and any other metal-containing biomolecules. Metallomics and research on metallome require analytical techniques that can provide information on the identification and quantification of metal/metalloid-containing biomolecules. This concept has been called speciation, and the acquisition of data according to the concept is performed using hyphenated techniques involving both separation and detection methods. In this review, the author intends to present several applications of complementary use of HPLC-inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) and HPLC-electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry for identification of unknown selenium-containing metabolites, and also to present a newly developed technique, capillary LC-ICP-MS to be used for the analysis of metal-binding proteins.