Application Notes: General

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Iodine is an essential nutrient in seawater, seafood, and iodine-enriched foods, such as iodized table salt. The most common forms of iodine in the diet are iodide and iodate, with additional iodo-organic compounds providing a small fraction of the bio-available iodine. Iodine deficiency affects thyroid hormone production and leads to developmental diseases, goiter, and paralysis (1).

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Since the introduction of high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) nearly 40 years ago, many improvements have been made to column stationary phases to achieve faster, more efficient separations. HPLC columns containing superficially porous (sometimes called fused-core) particles have recently gained increasing attention. Though this technology is not entirely new, it has been improved to the point where rapid, highly efficient separations can be achieved for some applications.

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Illegal drug use worldwide is at an all time high. Forensic laboratories are seeing increased sample loads creating an immediate need for fast and accurate analysis to positively identify confiscated materials in criminal investigations. This application highlights the value of gas chromatography with time-of-flight mass spectrometry (GC-TOFMS) for drug testing in forensic laboratories. A method was developed to successfully identify twenty drugs of abuse in 4.5 min. This GC-TOFMS method shows good chromatographic peak shape for even the most challenging drug analytes; even the peak shapes for amphetamine and methamphetamine were exceptional considering they were analyzed underivatized. The total ion chromatogram (TIC) for the twenty drug analytes is shown in Figure 1.

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Synthetic fused silica capillary tubing is a vital component in many scientific techniques. The general perception is that most laboratory glass products are fragile and easy to break. The opposite is true of fused silica capillary; with its protective coating it is both strong and durable when handled properly.

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D-Mannose-6-phosphate (M-6-P) is a terminal monosaccharide of some asparagine-linked (N-linked) oligosaccharides and is also part of an important intermediate in N-linked oligosaccharide biosynthesis. Some lysosomal glycoproteins require M-6-P terminated oligosaccharides for proper targeting and function. Lack of M-6-P or genetic defects in its synthesis or subsequent processing can result in a variety of diseases.

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Hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography (HILIC) offers unique advantages for the separation of very polar compounds when compared to reversed-phase chromatography. A new silica based HILIC phase was developed to provide additional selectivity options in HILIC separations. The separation of water soluble vitamins on the new TSKgel NH2-100 HILIC column and on the well known TSKgel Amide-80 HILIC column demonstrates the differences in selectivity.

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Thermal agility is a term that describes the ability of an oven to heat up and cool down. Both steps comprise the complete cycle time which, in turn, determines sample throughput. Fast GC accessories provide an attractive means of increasing sample throughput because they are easy to implement and deliver reliable performance at low cost. They require little or no bench space and do not incur additional costs for consumables and support equipment such as autosamplers, data acquisition software, and computers. Fast oven cooling is especially attractive because methods do not have to be re-validated since the separation parameters remain unchanged.

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Achieve highly reproducible cIEF separations of basic mAbs using the basic pH gradient cIEF separation method on the PA 800 Protein Characterization System.

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Run a difficult food sample on your IC and you stand a big chance that you will wreck the column. Of course, you can waste a lot of time on tedious sample preparation steps to eliminate undesired matrix components. Or you can go for Metrohm's automated compact stopped-flow dialysis providing optimum separation while protecting your column from detrimental compounds.

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LC–GC approaches to analysis are particularly attractive because they combine the selectivity of solid phase sorbents in the first dimension with the separating power and peak capacity of a capillary GC column in the following dimensions. Their widespread use is limited because of the difficultly in desolvating the stream from the LC dimension without the solvent vapour passing down the GC column in significant quantity. An alternative approach to elution chromatography in the first dimension is to harness the specificity of the solid-phase process for digital chromatography using discontinuous changes in solvent polarity. Digital chromatography on a small sorbent bed reduces the volume of mobile phase to discrete plugs that are sufficiently small to be injected directly into a GC with a large volume injector or, alternatively, subsampled into a conventional split/splitless injector.

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The global economic downturn, particularly the collapse of the automotive and associated industries, has caused an overall reduction in the demand for acrylonitrile. Since acetonitrile is obtained as a co-product in the production of acrylonitrile, the pharmaceutical, food, environmental, and chemical industries are experiencing an unprecedented acetonitrile shortage. This shortage has resulted in a sharp price increase, in some cases as much as 6-8 times; and the price is projected to remain high even after the production returns to normal.

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Hydrogen, commonly used as a carrier gas instead of Helium for gas chromatography (GC) can be supplied via cylinders or by the electrolysis of water using an in-house generator containing metallic electrodes or an ionomeric membrane. An in-house generator can provide a significant increase in safety and convenience with a reduction in operating costs.

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Hydroxyethylstarches (HES) are used increasingly as plasma expanders in medical applications. The HES' circulation time in the blood depends strongly on its molar mass distributions. Historically, polysaccharide characterization by Gel Permeation Chromatography (GPC) has been problematic, especially

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Heparin Characterization

Heparin is well-known as an anti-coagulant, antithrombotic drug. Chemically, it is a linear polysaccharide that is derived from animal tissues. For some time it has been known that heparin is not a homogeneous substance; rather, it is a heterogeneous mixture of molecules ranging in molar mass from less than 5,000 to more than 30,000 Daltons. Heparin can be chemically or enzymatically depolymerized to obtain low molecular weight (LMW) heparin products, which exhibit an improved pharmacological profile.

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This application details a fast, reliable and highly selective trace-level screening method for the quantification of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in environmental, food and biological samples, using gas chromatography and a triple stage quadrupole mass spectrometer. The analytical strategy is analogous to the well-established US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) Method 1668A.

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An ultrafast gradient LC separation method was developed to separate a 5-component drug mixture in 30 seconds, with peak widths of 1 second. maXis mass accuracy at sub-ppm levels and true isotopic pattern of the spectra from the peaks lead to a confident elemental formula assignment for each drug compound with the SmartFormula algorithm.

The success of evaporative light scattering detection relies on evaporating the eluent without destroying the analyte particle. Where the analyte is non-volatile, evaporator temperatures of 50-100 °C can be used without compound degradation, thus giving maximum sensitivity. However, when compounds have high vapor pressures and the eluent has a high boiling point (e.g. water), detection of semi-volatile compounds is problematic, because the evaporation temperature needs to be set at 30 °C or above in order to evaporate the solvent.

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QC test probes serve a vital function in ensuring the reproducibility of modern GC columns. These probes ensure that the columns have been properly deactivated, contain the correct amount of stationary phase, and have the same relative retention as the last column purchased. The choice of individual compounds in these test mixes varies widely and can have profound consequences on the performance of a column in the users' applications.