J. Swearingen, Jr. and T. G. Chasteen

Department of Chemistry
Sam Houston State University
Huntsville, Texas 77341-2117

Presented at the 58^th ACS Southwest Regional Meeting in Austin, Texas USA November 3-6, 2002.

The bacteria Pseudomonas fluorescens K27 were simultaneously amended with soluble but toxic selenium and tellurium salts. The bacterium reduced some of the soluble salts to the elemental form, which are insoluble and were harvested from the cultures in late stationary phase. Inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES) was used in order to determine selenium and tellurium concentrations in the solid and liquid extracts from biological cultures.