| Abstract
| - Various metals and metalloids can be converted by avariety of microorganisms to their volatile methylderivatives.These bioconversions are important from anenvironmentalperspective because they take place over long timeperiods and the products have quite different properties(e.g., transportation, toxicological) as compared to theinorganic species from which they are derived.Whereasthe biomethylation of arsenic is well established, that ofthe closely related element antimony is not, and there areno reports of antimony methylation by monoseptic microbialcultures. We report here, for the first time, the formationoftrimethylantimony [(CH3)3Sb] by acharacterized microorganism, Scopulariopsis brevicaulis, grown aerobicallyinthe presence of inorganic antimony. Volatile antimonyevolved into the headspace above the fungal cultures wasquantified by remote trapping and analysis by inductivelycoupled plasma−mass spectrometry (ICP−MS). Theexistence of biogenic trimethylantimony was established,following exclusion of oxygen from cultures after growth,by remote trapping of volatile compounds and analysis bygas chromatography with compound-specific (massspectrometry) or element-specific (atomic absorption)detection. No other volatile product containing antimonywasdetected in culture headspace gases.
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