Metal Organic Complexation in Seawater: Historical Background and Future Directions

Abstract

The speciation of most biologically active trace metals in seawater is dominated by complexation by organic ligands. This review traces the history of work in this area, from the early observations that showed surprisingly poor recoveries using metal preconcentration protocols to the present day, where advances in mass spectroscopy and stable isotope geochemistry are providing new insights into the structure, origin, fate, and biogeochemical impact of organic ligands. Many long-standing hypotheses about the specific biological origin of ligands such as siderophores in seawater are finally being validated. This work has revealed the complexity of organic complexation, with multiple ligands and, in some cases, timescales of ligand exchange that are much slower than originally thought. The influence of organic complexation on scavenging is now a key parameter in biogeochemical models of biologically essential metals, especially iron. New insights about the sources and sinks of ligands are required to enhance the usefulness of these models.