Tiron (And then, the mighty Tiron bound the iron tightly.)

Tiron is a metal ligand and can be used in colorimetric metal assays.

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Transition metal complexes tend to have the happy property of having their frontier orbitals separated by energy characteristic of photons of visible light - that is, they end up having pretty colors. I've never actually used it, but Merck claims complexes with different metals that span essentially the whole visible spectrum - iron gives blue, copper greenish-yellow, titanium orange, and molybdenum yellow.

For another example of a colorimetrically useful metal ligand, see my entry on that wonderfully named staple of undergrad analytical chemistry labs, eriochrome black T.

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