Radiochromatography software aids study

The Paterson Institute for Cancer Research at the University of Manchester, UK is successfully using LabLogic’s Laura 4 software to control all the components of its radiochromatography facility.

Dr David R. Jones, an associate scientist in the Institute’s Inositide laboratory, uses a Shimadzu HPLC system and LabLogic BetaRAM 4 radio detector for the study of phosphoinositides, a family of phospholipids that regulate many cellular processes.

“We find Laura 4 a very convenient way to control the BetaRAM and all the Shimadzu HPLC modules in a single window, and its sample analysis software makes it easy to collect and process data,” says Dr Jones.

He is investigating how phosphoinositide levels are regulated using metabolically radiolabelled mammalian cells. The use of the radio detector (in Cerenekov counting mode) means that manual fraction collecting followed by static counting is avoided.

“We need to fully understand how phosphoinositide levels are regulated within cells and, despite their low abundance, it is possible to measure them if cells are metabolically radiolabelled with 32P phosphate,” Dr Jones explains. “As part of this process we have to separate any free radio-labelled phosphate and ATP from the deacylated radiolabelled phosphoinositides of interest. The elution time is so long that manual fraction collecting every 15 seconds is not feasible. Instead, we use the BetaRAM 4 radio detector in Cerenekov counting mode and we don’t have any problems with radioactive decay, despite the long analysis time.

“I rate the detector and software highly compared with other HPLC equipment I’ve worked with, mainly because of their robust performance and ease of use. I anticipate that both will be key components of our phosphoinositide analysis facility for the foreseeable future.”