The Scientific Committee invites all scientists which are involved and/or interested in the multifaceted field of „Speciation Analysis“ to take part in this conference and to contribute to the scientific program. A major goal are interdisciplinary discussions about novel research results, about current problems and needs and about future developments.
Especially young scientists are encouraged to submit their work and to take part in designing the future of „Speciation Analysis“.
Background and Scope
Trace elements play an important role in the biomedical, nutritional and environmental field either as essential components e.g. in enzymes or as potentially toxic components e.g. in food or in the environment. The realisation that the determination of total contents is not sufficient for an adequate understanding of the function of trace elements led to the establishment of speciation analysis about 20 years ago.
The term „chemical speciation“ is now defined by IUPAC (Templeton et al., Pure Appl. Chem., 2000, 72, 1453-1470). Within the last two decades a variety of applications for the identification and quantification of trace element species has been published.
Developments within this field of research have been documented by three „International Conferences on Trace Element Speciation in Biomedical, Nutritional and Environmental Sciences“ held in 1998, 2001 and 2004 at the GSF - National Research Center (see History).
We are now announcing the 4th conference in this series on May 25th - 29th 2008 at the same venue.
Despite advances in instrumentation, methods, standardisation and even legislation, there are still many problems that remain unsolved and many questions are still not answered.
For example, molecular detection techniques greatly improved the reliability of species identification. However, matrix effects, low concentrations or the instability of element species are preventing the successful application of these techniques in many cases.
Another important need is that speciation analysis manages the step from basic research to an applied science which makes increasingly use of its expertise to solve real problems in life sciences and industry.
Scientific Topics- Applied Speciation Analysis I: Environment and unprocessed food
- Applied Speciation Analysis II: Food production and other industries
- Applied Speciation Analysis III: Biomedical, clinical and bioinorganic field
- Metallomics / Metalloproteomics
- Quality control / Reference materials / Stability and transformation of element species
- New techniques in sampling and sample preparation
- New methods and techniques using elemental and/or molecular detection
- Trends and future developments (e.g. Heteroatom-tagging)
