Thermo Fisher Scientific has opened a global food testing laboratory in Dreieich, Germany. When a chemical contamination event occurs, the Food Safety Response Centre team will mobilize to develop the methods, provide the workflow instructions and recommend the equipment and supplies needed to allow food safety professionals to rapidly respond to the contaminant. According to the company, the centre is strategically located in close proximity to Europe's leading food safety research institutions and is equipped with both a wet lab for sample preparation and a state-of-the-art instrument lab complete with capabilities including liquid and gas chromatography and mass spectrometry.

"Identification and containment of food toxicity require a rapid response, otherwise the threat to human health and global commerce is magnified with each passing day," said Marc N. Casper, president and chief executive officer of Thermo Fisher Scientific, in a statement. "Chemical contamination in food is a growing and costly threat, including risks from environmental contamination and naturally occurring toxins. Our Food Safety Response Centre will be a valuable resource whenever food companies, governments and the people they serve are at risk."

For more information about the centre visit 

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Thermo Fisher Scientific has opened a global food testing laboratory in Dreieich, Germany.

Food safety response centre

Diagnostic and analytical testing services provider LGC has announced the launch of a new genomics division. According to the company it has been seeing successful growth in the area of genomics as part of the company’s Life and Food Sciences division since the 2005 acquisition of AGOWA. Through the acquired genomics company, LGC has provided an array of flexible nucleic acid sample extraction services and products, DNA sequencing, next generation sequencing and genomic services to international pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies and private and public research organizations.

“The launch of LGC Genomics as a new operating division is an exciting step for LGC and presents excellent opportunities for growth,” said John McQuillian, managing director of the new division, in a statement. “Under the new brand, LGC Genomics will continue to advance the development and delivery of first-rate genomic services and products, keeping our customers at the forefront of technology and expertise in this increasingly sophisticated field of science.”

As part of the restructuring process, AGOWA genomics products and services will be rebranded LGC Genomics. For more information visit 

Diagnostic and analytical testing services provider LGC has announced the launch of a new genomics division.

New genomics division

Using metabolomics to study the different ways that people digest and process the food that they eat could help researchers to understand the mechanisms behind conditions such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease, say researchers from the Munich Functional Metabolomics Initiative. To do this researchers have begun a study called HuMet, which closely studied 15 metabolically healthy young men for four days. During this time the volunteers underwent four different nutritional interventions, along with physical exercise, while 56 blood plasma samples, 25 urine samples and 32 breath condensate and breath samples were taken. Aliquots of the collected samples were analysed using PTR-MS, LC-MS-MS, GC-MS, GCxGC-MS, FT-ICR-MS and NMR, to yield qualitative and quantitative information on around 400 metabolites.

"In general, all people react similarly to specific nutritional components," says Hannelore Daniel, professor of nutritional physiology, who worked on the study, "but there are big differences in their responses." Beginning with an empty stomach, subjects were given glucose, which caused their blood sugar levels to rise. "Obviously all values will rise", says Daniel. "The blood sugar level must go up. But it is very interesting to observe the differences in the way the levels rise and fall off again. It took four hours for the test subjects' blood sugar levels to come back into alignment with each other."

It is hoped that eventually the study of metabolomics will enable custom-tailored therapies for people with metabolic disorders and nutrition plans for people wanting to lose weight.

Using metabolomics to study the different ways that people digest and process the food that they eat could help researchers to understand the mechanisms behind conditions such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease, say researchers from the Munich Functional Metabolomics Initiative.

Metabolomics study

A method has been developed for detecting arsenic in animal feed, according to a study published in the 

Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry

By using high performance liquid chromatography coupled to an inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer (HPLC–ICP-MS), the researchers claim to be able to detect two organic arsenic animal feed additives including roxarsone and p-arsanilic acid, as well as other arsenic species such as arsenite, dimethylarsinic acid, monomethylarsonic acid, arsenate and 4-hydroxyphenylarsonic acid. Using a gradient elution procedure, the separation of the seven arsenic species was reported in less than 20 minutes. Liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry was used as an assistant tool to screen arsenobetain in the feed samples. The method is reported to be capable of detecting less than 1.7 μg of arsenic per kg, with a recovery greater than 78.5% for all arsenic species. According to the report the ion-pair reversed-phase HPLC–ICP-MS method was then successfully applied to the speciation of arsenic in feedstuff and formula feed samples.

1. P. Wang et al., J. Agric. Food Chem., on-line 7 April 2010.

A method has been developed for detecting arsenic in animal feed, according to a study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Arsenic detection

A selection of the latest developments in chromatography software.

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Products: Chromatography software

 Alasdair Matheson spoke to Astrid Gjelstad from the School of Pharmacy, University of Oslo, Norway about her studies into electromembrane extraction and the possibilities that this alternative sample preparation technique opens up for research.

Regular Article

Speaking about studies into electromembrane extraction and the possibilities that this alternative sample preparation technique opens up for research.

Electromembrane Extraction — An Alternative Sample Preparation Technique

HPLC and GC are the largest markets in China, with HPLC being one of the fastest growing driven by the pharmaceutical industry, the public sector and food analysis. GC’s growth is driven by the oil and gas industry, in addition to food and agriculture.

The rapid expansion in China continues to fuel growth for separation science technologies. This market includes technologies such as HPLC, gas chromatography (GC), ion chromatography, low-pressure liquid chromatography, flash chromatography, thin-layer chromatography, chemical sensing, capillary electrophoresis and discrete and continuous flow analysers.

Market Profile: Chinese Separation Market

The omega (ω- or n-) 6 and n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) are essential nutrients that must be provided in the diet and it is well-known that the dietary supply affects the n-6 and n-3 PUFA levels in the brain, liver and other organs. The importance of the dietary PUFA supply extends to pregnancy and lactation due to the dependence of maternal to infant PUFA transfer via the placenta and in breast milk on the mother’s PUFA intake. Epidemiological and experimental studies have provided considerable evidence that nutrition is an important factor in altering early and later susceptibility to metabolic diseases, such as excess weight gain, diabetes and hypertension, in addition to neurologic programming. With respect to the latter, while the consequences of some nutrient deficiencies on the developing brain have clear physiological signs, such as the somatic, cognitive and motor skill deficits due to iodine deficiency, others are more difficult to diagnose and mechanisms of actions are unknown or incompletely understood. Early breast-feeding is associated with better cognitive performance, while short-term deficiencies of iron and choline during development have long-term implications for behaviour and learning. These “programming” effects are believed to result from the consequences of deficiency on metabolic or morphological development such that maturing systems build on an inappropriate cellular, molecular or metabolic environment thus changing the trajectory of function from normal. Recent advances in lipid nutrition have taken the role of dietary fat from provision of calories and minimum amounts of essential fatty acids to the understanding that PUFA are complex nutrients that regulate gene expression and protein function to coordinate energy substrate utilization, cellular communication and the response to immune and inflammatory challenges, including oxidative stress. Elucidation of the importance of PUFA in development, however, is complicated by the shifts in expression and repression of genes during prenatal development and during adaptation to the extra-uterine environment. Nutritional proteomics, with a combination of two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (2D-PAGE), in-gel digestion and mass spectrometric identification of differentially expressed proteins, offers the opportunity for discovery of proteins regulated by specific nutrients, such as PUFA, across different life stages and in different organs and cells.

Two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis reveals regulatory effects of dietary polyunsaturated fatty acid supply on protein expression in early development.

Two-dimensional Polyacrylamide Gel Electrophoresis Reveals Regulatory Effects of Dietary Polyunsaturated Fatty Acid Supply on Protein Expression in Early Development

The Column-05-10-2010