Аннотация:Humic substances (HS) play important functions in the environment by radical
scavenging in biogeochemical redox reactions and thus influencing behavior of pollutants
and preventing damage to cell membranes; this is due to antioxidant properties of HS.
Phenolic moieties formed from more complex plant precursor molecules, such as lignin
and tannins, have been suggested as the major electron-donating moieties of HS, and
thus are thought to provide their antioxidant activity [1, 2]. However, due to difficulties in
measuring the individual antioxidant components of a complex mixture such as HS, Trolox
(6-hydroxy-2,5,7,8-tetramethylchroman-2-carboxylic acid)-equivalency is mainly used as a
measure for the antioxidant capacity (AOC) of HS. Trolox-equivalent antioxidant capacity
(TEAC) is most often measured using the ABTS (2,2'-azinobis-(3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-
sulfonic acid)). Nevertheless, the ABTS cation-radical is a synthetic one, so the antioxidant
effect cannot be clearly interpreted in terms of biological systems. Besides, antioxidant
interaction with ABTS both involves electro- and proton-donating mechanisms, whilst
interaction of antioxidant with biologically relevant radicals such as the peroxyl radical
could be realized only through proton donation. Consequently, it is important to compare
data obtained by this method with data obtained by methods based on the use of the
peroxyl radical such as oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC) approach.
In our study we measured AOC of 9 soil HS both by TEAC and ORAC methods. A
set of HS included 3 samples of fulvic acids (FA) extracted from sod-podzolic soils and 6
samples of humic acids (HA) obtained from sod-podzolic soils and chenozems. Both FA
and HA were characterized by elemental analysis and 13C NMR spectroscopy. Evaluation
of AOC using TEAC approach was conducted according [2] at pH 6.8 using 40 min as the
end point. ORAC measurements were performed according to [3] at pH 7.4. To compare
the obtained values of AOC, they were expressed in Trolox equivalents (TE) normalized to
weight.
Values of measured AOC varied in the range 0.3–1.4 mol/mg HS in case of ORAC
and in the range 0.2–1.5 mol/mg HS when TEAC was used. Antioxidant properties of FA
were usually more pronounced than those of HA. Though similar ranges of AOC values for
ORAC and TEAC methods were observed for the studied set of HS, AOC values obtained
by ORAC were usually lower than those obtained using TEAC. The latter might be most
likely explained by realization of two mechanism of radical scavenging (electron and
proton donation) under TEAC conditions when only scavenging via electron donation could
occur in case of ORAC. Surprisingly, there were two exceptions, namely, HA derived from
chernozems when ORAC values were greater than TEAC. As compared to the other
studied HS, chernozemic HA possessed the highest content of aromatic moieties (both
non-substituted and oxygen-substituted carbon) and the lowest ratios O/C and H/C. As a
short-term assay using the ABTS•+ is recommended for the evaluation of fast constituents,
rather than for determination of the end-point AOCs of HS [2], our results allowed to
conclude that humic materials of high aromaticity and low oxygen content have relatively
low content of fast constituents demonstrating antioxidant activity.
References
1. Aeschbacher et al. // Environ. Sci. Technol. 2012. 46:4916–4925.
2. Klein et al. // J. Soil Sediments. 2016. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-016-1538-7.
3. Cao et al. // Free Radic. Biol. Med. 1993. 14(3): 303–311.