showed the intracellular total iron content in C. mili-taris cells measured by ICP-MS. Small quantities of iron existed in seed cells (see data on day 0). Since no additional iron was fed into the control medium, the trend of iron content was declining. On the contrary, iron was rapidly absorbed and transported into the cells during the first 4 days in iron-treated cultures. Yuan et al. [12] reported that Mn2+ could markedly increase the biomass and contents of nucleosides and bases of C. militaris, but they did not