Lehr Lab on Jin Saeki Ko

AAS Trial 1 / Standard Operating Procedure

Fri, 05 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Quantification of Iron in E. coli Cells by Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy

Purpose

This protocol describes the use of atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS) to quantify iron in an E. coli cell sample using an external calibration curve.

Calculations for AAS

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The reported amount of of iron in WT E. coli is around 10^5 to 10^6 atoms per cell ¹.

Converting atoms per cell to micrograms per gram of cells

Using

\[ 10^5 \,\text{atoms Fe/cell} \]

the iron mass per cell is

Iron Quantification using Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy

Sat, 14 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Since we’re working under the assumption that we have isogenic mutants with varying intracellular iron concentrations, it would only make sense to verify this assumption by quantifying intracellular iron of each strain. I’m planning on working with Dr. Lehr from the Chemistry department to do just this using AAS. This will be a crucial step in our project, as it will allow us to correlate the phenotypic differences we observe with the actual intracellular iron levels, thereby strengthening our conclusions about the role of iron in the observed phenotypes.