Meat authenticity For religious and cultural reasons, meat au-
thenticity is a concern for about 23% of the global population. Many of the rest would like assurance that what they buy is accurately labeled. A new LC/MS/MS method from AB SCIEX (Concord, Ontario, Canada) is useful in detecting marker peptides for porcine and equine flesh in other meats using a QTRAP 5500 MS with multiple reaction monitoring (MRM). MRM is able to differentiate between horse and beef flesh due to differences in one or more characteristic amino acids. Detection sensitiv- ity can be as small as 0.13% contamination.
TLC scanner I am impressed with Camag’s (Muttenz,
Switzerland) TLC Scanner 4 for densitometry evaluation of thin layer chromatography (TLC) and HPTLC plates, using two wavelengths. Dual wavelengths facilitate background correction by subtraction. The optical range is 190–900 nm. The optical resolution is sufficient to re- cord 36 tracks with 100 bands each. Each track is scanned repeatedly with a small offset, which facilitates location of the peak maximum. In- tegration of peak areas is with automatic or manual baseline correction. Spectra for each peak are recorded for comparison with other plates. Unexpected peaks can be referenced to the main component as prescribed by European and American Pharmacopoeias. My impression is that if you are doing quantitative TLC, you will really appreciate the TLC Scanner 4.
Capillary electrophoresis (CE) In the early days of capillary electrophoresis,
leading scientists felt that CE and MS should be a natural fit since they both excelled with low flow. This vision was difficult to reduce to practice. One had to independently control the flow of liquid carrier liquid and ions, while generating a high voltage at the exit to sup- port electrospray. Two years ago, scientists at Beckman (Fullerton, CA) seemed to have an improved interface for CE/MS that used a porous conductive capillary and a conductive liquid that provided ion flow without disturbing the flow in the CE capillary, yet provides stable electrospray ionization. At the low flow rates, problematic ion suppression is avoided, im- proving quantitation and method robustness.
www.polymerchar.com/CRYSTEX_QC
New Quality Control Solution for Polypropylene Plants CRYSTEX®
QC is an instrument of simple operation that automates the quantification of the Soluble Fraction (‘xylene solubles’) in polypropylene resins at Process and Quality Control laboratories in production plants.
Manpower and analysis time are significantly reduced while precision is outstanding. The instrument also quantifies ethylene content and intrinsic viscosity in the same analysis that in total lasts two hours.
The devil is in the details, so the CE team at Beckman was joined with a similar team from AB SCIEX to create the CESI 8000 System for Biologics Characterization. The 8000 will be supported by a new business unit called SCIEX Separations. This group will focus on devel- oping products for therapeutic biologics.
Technical program HPLC 2014’s technical program was organized around three parallel tracks. Tutorial sessions were also available at the same time. Thus, anyone could partake of only about a quarter of the program. At Pittcon, the number of ac- tive rings in the circus was even higher.
Separation technology: an
interesting decade A decade ago, we separation scientists were giddy with the results of sequencing the first human genome, which was enabled by massively parallel HPCE. With the confidence built upon success, we set off to develop
new separation technology using LC/MS to discover biomarkers of disease. The goal was to find unique markers that correlated with specific diseases. Patient pools were small, so apparent correlations were frequent, and mostly useless.
Today, the operating hypothesis is that most diseases express several to many markers, confounded by natural variation in patient re- sponse. Any biomarker discovery study requires sifting through GB or TB of data, often in dis- parate files. Biomarker teams need experts in chromatography, mass spectrometry, statistics, and informatics. Nevertheless, the emphasis has changed from developing high-peak-capacity separations technology to one showing that the tools for ’omics really deliver the promised benefits to society. It’s about time.
Robert L. Stevenson, Ph.D., is Editor, American Laboratory/Labcompare; e-mail: rlsteven@
yahoo.com.
Soluble Fraction Measurement in QC made simple, accurate and fully-automated.
Instrumentation | Detectors | Software
|
Training
AMERICAN LABORATORY • 9 • SEPTEMBER 2014
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52