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LC–MS in Metabolomics

In this video, Robert T. Kennedy of the University of Michigan discusses the role of liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC–MS) in the rapid development of metabolomics and the challenge of dealing with all the data. He then goes onto talk about the methods used in a recent study on glucose metabolism to analyze complex metabolic pathways and the challenges of using smaller samples.

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A team of scientists has analyzed and evaluated the impact of salt weathering on an historical house using a combination of ion chromatography (IC), chemometrics, and thermodynamic chemical modelling.

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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.

Agilent Technologies Inc. (Santa Clara, California) has agreed to support research by Steven Gross, a faculty member in the Department of Pharmacology at Weill Cornell Medical College (New York, New York), into amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

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Phenomenex (Torrance, California, USA) and the Tecan Group (Männedorf, Switzerland) have announced a new collaboration to co-market automated solid-phase extraction (SPE) products.

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Purnendu “Sandy” Dasgupta, Hamish Small Chair in Ion Analysis of Chemistry and Biochemistry in the UT Arlington College of Science, has been awarded almost $1 million from NASA. The grant will support research into extension of the open-tubular capillary chromatography platform that Dasgupta developed for the detection and separation of ions.

In this video from LCGC TV, Mary J. Wirth of Purdue University explains the phenomenon of slip flow: what it is, how it can improve separations - particularly of proteins and monoclonal antibodies - and where it may take us in the future.

Agilent Technologies Inc. (Santa Clara, California) and Seahorse Bioscience (Billerica, Massachusetts) have signed a definitive agreement under which Agilent will acquire Seahorse Bioscience, a provider of instruments and assay kits for measuring cell metabolism and bioenergetics.

There is a shortcoming in our current educational system. There is too much rote learning, and not enough time given to let science-minded students explore a topic. Overall, when students ask their own questions (not ones given to them by instructors), they become more invested in finding the answers.

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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.

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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.

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Ion-mobility spectrometry (IMS) is an anlytical technique that provides for the separation of ions in the gas phase. The separation, occuring on a timescale of milliseconds, is based on the differing mobility of ions according to their charge, shape, and size. These characteristics make IMS suitable for coupling with mass spectrometry (MS), to serve in current MS-based workflows for metabolomics and lipidomics. IM-MS improves peak capacity and signal-to-noise ratios, and it provides more confidence during compound identification or confirmation than conventional analyses. Combining collision-induced dissociation with ion-mobility separation improves the specificity of MS/MS-based approaches. Significantly, ion-mobility-derived information provides an orthogonal, physicochemical parameter-the collision cross section (CCS)-which relates to a metabolite's shape. Novel hardware and software solutions enable analysts to process and exploit IMS-MS data for qualitative and quantitative metabolomics and lipidomics applications.