All News

The future of biological and clinical research will depend on technological innovations and cross discipline co-operation as science seeks a deeper understanding of increasingly complex biological systems. The 2016 recipient of the AES Mid-Career Award, Amy Herr, and her team at the University of California, Berkeley, USA, have explored these areas using a combination of chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, and electrical engineering with strong foundations in biology, material science, and analytical chemistry to innovate new microfluidic analytical technology. She recently spoke to LCGC about this work.

Eurofins Scientific has announced the acquisition of Agfirst Bay of Plenty, a fruit maturity testing laboratory in New Zealand. Agfirst Bay of Plenty provides independent kiwifruit maturation sampling and testing services across two facilities in the Bay of Plenty region of New Zealand.

Activated Research Company (ARC), producers of the Polyarc reactor, has announced a new partnership with Wasson-ECE to bring the system to the international market for the first time.

Researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have identified the source of toxic emissions within electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) using headspace gas chromatography in tandem with mass spectrometry (HS-GC–MS) and high pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC).

Incognito ruminates on the woes associated with connecting liquid chromatography (LC) and gas chromatography (GC) columns correctly, and ponders a future where everything is connecting differently.

Fast protein liquid chromatography (FPLC) and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC): two liquid chromatographic methods in direct comparison. This article discusses the differences between the two techniques with particular emphasis on the requirements of their respective analytes.

The International Symposium on GPC/SEC and Related Techniques will be held at the Novotel in Amsterdam, Netherlands, from 27–29 September 2016.

Click the title above to open The Column August 22, 2016 North American issue, Volume 12, Number 15, in an interactive PDF format.

Continuing MilliporeSigma’s series of podcasts on the impact of water quality on chromatography techniques, Joe Plurad discusses the practical effects of ultrapure water in a specific area of analysis: The importance of water quality on perchlorate analysis by ion chromatography (IC).

I’ve done that thing where I’ve stated a very interesting title-I hope I can deliver something which lives up to it. I dislike it when people “overstate” their talk or poster titles at conferences to draw me in and then don’t deliver against the promise-I’ll let you judge how we go here.

The 33rd International Symposium on Microscale Separations and Bioanalysis (MSB 2017) will be held from 26–29 March 2017, at Conference Center de Leeuwenhorst, The Netherlands, in the “largest flower garden of Europe” near to Amsterdam International Airport and North Sea beaches.

Top-down protein quantitation, especially using triple-quadrupole MS, but even in general, has hardly been pursued. To help fill this gap, we recently reported a systematic investigation of intact-protein quantitation using multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) on a triple-quadrupole MS system, and we believe that this approach can be a promising alternative route to consider going forward.

A group of researchers has studied the migration of monomers and plastic additives from plastic food packaging in microwave heated homemade food and packed liquid food using QuEChERS and gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry.

Sciex has announced that it will work with the Francis Crick Institute and the University of Cambridge to build a metabolism-centric proteomic map.

Polymer Char are holding a “User Training Meeting” at the 6th International Conference on Polyolefin Characterization (ICPC), Shanghai, China, 6–9 November 2016.

Researchers from the China Pharmaceutical University in Nanjing, China, have published a review of the recent advances in the preparation and application of monolithic capillary columns in separation science.

A publication in TrAC Trends in Analytical Chemistry has covered the recent advances in microfluidic liquid chromatography.

Victor U. Weiss and Günter Allmaier from TU Vien discuss how combining molecular beacons with chip capillary electrophoresis (CE) offers scope to investigate viral RNA replication and improve gene therapy delivery systems.

Doping and cheating the competition may be as old as competition itself. Doping horses for chariot racing was reported during the Roman Empire and doping is now commonly reported in the press. Advanced technologies such as ultrahigh-pressure liquid chromatography (UHPLC) analysis coupled to ultrafast tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) detection provide excellent sensitivity for the analysis of horse doping agents.

A preview of the upcoming 31st International Symposium on Chromatography (ISC 2016), which will be held 28 August–1 September at University College Cork, Ireland.

Click the title above to open The Column August 08, 2016 Europe & Asia issue, Volume 12, Number 14, in an interactive PDF format.

Click the title above to open the LCGC North America August 2016 Annual Industry Trends and Directory Supplement, Vol 34 No s8, in an interactive PDF format.

How to optimize the key variables in HPLC analysis-sample preparation and column selection

Systematic toxicological analysis (STA) is an important step in medicolegal investigations of death, poisoning, and drug use. The primary goal is the detection and confirmation of potentially toxic compounds in evidence. This article describes a workflow using non-targeted liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS) for reliable compound identification. Tandem mass spectrometry was performed on a low-resolution quadrupole-quadrupole-linear ion trap instrument. Acquired spectra were submitted to automated library search, and positive matches were verified by expert reviewing. After validation, the non-targeted LC–MS/MS technique was integrated in the STA service provided by our laboratory.

Detectors based on ultraviolet absorbance are the most common detectors in use for liquid chromatography.

The past couple instalments of “Sample Preparation Perspectives” have looked at current trends in the field. Another recent trend is dried blood spot analysis and other analysis methods using minute sample amounts. This month we take a quick look at the role of sample homogeneity and the determination of sample size. Microsampling approaches, including dried blood spots, are discussed.