Bethany Degg | Authors

Extracts of wild blueberries (Vaccinium angustifolium Ait.) contain bioactive molecules that could be used in the development of new therapeutic treatments for the dental disease periodontitis.

Microbial life is possible within the Earth’s mantle, according to new research. High performance liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (HPLC–MS) analysis of rock cores sampled from the Iberian plate margin (off the coast of Spain and Portugal) revealed the presence of lipid biomarkers indicative of microbial communities present beneath the seafloor more than 100 million years ago.

Researchers have published a new approach to heparin screening that allows the detection of adulteration within one hour. Published in the journal Analytical Chemistry, the study presents a screening strategy using hydrogen peroxide digestion followed by fast reversed-phase ion pairing liquid chromatography (reversed-phase IP–LC) coupled with tandem mass spectrometry (MS–MS) to detect contamination of heparin samples.

Researchers from Kaohsiung Medical University in Taiwan have been investigating melamine and have shown that melamine tableware is a potential source of melamine exposure and that workers in a melamine tableware factory are subsequently at a higher risk of renal injury associated with ambient melamine exposure.

Laser irradiation of blue tattoo ink can create toxic byproducts - including hydrogen cyanide (HCN) - according to new research published by scientists at the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment. Pyrolysis gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (Py–GC–MS) was performed on samples of copper phthalocyanine blue to predict the decomposition products resulting from irradiation, as part of a wider on-going project assessing the safety of tattoo inks.

Researchers revisit arteriovenous profiling - comparing changes in the metabolome of arterial versus venous blood in the diagnosis of disease - using targeted and untargeted LC–MS methods.