Uranium speciation after contact with plant cells

Uranium is an ubiqutous element. Besides this depleted uranium amunition as well as uranium mining and milling and manifold other use of uranium leads to an increase of uranium contamination in the environment.
Application of laser-induced and time-resolved methods allow the direct determination of uranium speciation at extremely low concentrations. This behaviour can be directly observed due to the properties extraorbitant luminescence properties of uranium-(VI). Contact of dissolved uranium with living cells at ambient conditions changes dramatically the uranium speciation.
Some examples fluorescence properties of uranium species relevant to the environment are shown. The change of this speciation can be observed then due to a change in luminescence properties. Besides of several organic phosphate binding forms although other uranium species were found as uranium bond to phenolic and thiol groups. Some of them do not emit any luminescence at room temperature. Nevertheless low temperature measurements allow the assignment of species not fluorescing at room temperature, due to strong dynamic quench effects of H2O molecules and COO- groups.