Characterisation of aerosol particles using combined thermoanalytical techniques

Four different artificial aerosol particles as well as one standard environmental aerosol particle (NIST SRM 1649a) were investigated. While the mass loss of the aerosol particles varies from 1.5 to 32% of the entire mass, only a small part of each volatile fraction consists of organic compounds. Due to the construction of the combined thermoanalytical system, only a small part of the evolved gases is used for the mass spectrometric investigation. This results in a restricted sensitivity which does not allow an identification of individual organic components. Additional investigations like thermal desorption GC-MS reveal up to 1600 individual components (SRM 1649a). This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

聚酰胺类DNA识别分子质谱的碎裂机理

采用ESI-MS法研究了8个含有N-甲基吡咯(Py)和N-甲基咪唑(Im)杂环的聚酰胺质谱的特征和碎裂机理. MSⁿ数据表明, 聚酰胺化合物的主要碎裂路径是环与环间化学键的断裂, 即C—CO键、CO—NH键、HN—C键的断裂, 同时伴随着H原子的重排. 利用这些碎裂特征, 可以得到聚酰胺丰富的结构信息和区分它们的两种同分异构体.     

Asymmetric Electrochemical Transformations

The field of electrochemical synthesis has developed rapidly over the last decade and has provided alternative synthetic methods with the absence of stoichiometric amounts of chemical oxidants or reductants. Although sustainable electrosynthetic procedures have been developed, relatively few examples of highly enantioselective catalytic electrosynthesis have been reported to date. The development of general strategies for electrochemical enantiocontrol has thus proven to be a considerable challenge. This Minireview highlights the current knowledge and recent advances in the synthetic utility of electrochemical transformations for asymmetric synthesis. Specifically, three major types of catalytic enantioselective strategy in electrosynthesis are outlined, including electrochemical activation of chiral catalyst‐bound substrates, asymmetric cascade electrochemical processes, and chemically modified chiral electrodes.     

A Mass Spectrometric Approach for Probing the Stability of Bioorganic Radicals

Glycyl radicals are important bioorganic radical species involved in enzymatic catalysis. Herein, we demonstrate that the stability of glycyl‐type radicals (X‐^.CH‐Y) can be tuned on a molecular level by varying the X and Y substituents and experimentally probed by mass spectrometry. This approach is based on the gas‐phase dissociation of cysteine sulfinyl radical (X‐Cys‐Y) ions through homolysis of a C_α? C_β bond. This fragmentation produces a glycyl‐type radical upon losing CH₂SO, and the degree of this loss is closely tied to the stability of the as‐formed radical. Theoretical calculations indicate that the energy of the C_α? C_β bond homolysis is predominantly affected by the stability of the glycyl radical product through the captodative effect, rather than that of the parent sulfinyl radical. This finding suggests a novel experimental method to probe the stability of bioorganic radicals, which can potentially broaden our understanding of these important reactive intermediates.     

New Fragmentation Pathways for Cephalosporins by Electrospray Ionization Quadrupole Time-of-flight Mass Spectrometry

Introduction Cephalosporins are antibiotics of β-lactam family. They have a broad spectrum of antibiotic activity due to their ability to inhibit bacterial cell wall synthesis of different Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. Cephalosporins are used orally or parenterally to treat a wide variety of infections throughout the body and are often prescribed to fight penicillin resistant microorganisms. They also find a common use in prophylaxis for surgical procedures where infections in the operating area could pose a serious risk[1,2].     

Ultraviolet Photodissociation: Developments towards Applications for Mass‐Spectrometry‐Based Proteomics

Unraveling of all of the information contained in proteomes poses a tremendous chemical challenge, which is balanced by the promise of potentially transformational knowledge. Mass spectrometry offers an unprecedented arsenal of tools for diverse proteomic investigations. Recently, it was demonstrated that ultraviolet light can be utilized to initiate unique and potentially useful fragmentations in peptides and proteins. Either nonspecific dissociation or highly specific dissociation at engineered chromophoric sites is possible following photon absorption. The level of specificity and control over fragmentation in these experiments is greater than with other fragmentation methods. Novel techniques made possible by this technology are poised to make substantial contributions to the field of proteomics.     

Discovery of the New Metastable HONF. Radical

The new radical HONF has been detected in the gas phase by neutralization–reionization mass spectrometry (NRMS). The radical has been identified and directly characterized as a gaseous isolated species, having a lifetime of at least 1 μs and a linear cis–trans structure of H‐O‐N‐F connectivity. Detection of this molecule, which is highly unstable towards the dissociation into HF and NO and kinetically sufficiently stable to be observed, represents an advance in the search for high‐energy species.     

Reaction of Aromatic Peroxyl Radicals with Alkynes: A Mass Spectrometric and Computational Study Using the Distonic Radical Ion Approach

The reaction of the aromatic distonic peroxyl radical cations N‐methyl pyridinium‐4‐peroxyl (PyrOO^.+) and 4‐(N,N,N‐trimethyl ammonium)‐phenyl peroxyl (AnOO^.+), with symmetrical dialkyl alkynes 10a – c was studied in the gas phase by mass spectrometry. PyrOO^.+ and AnOO^.+ were produced through reaction of the respective distonic aryl radical cations Pyr^.+ and An^.+ with oxygen, O₂. For the reaction of Pyr^.+ with O₂ an absolute rate coefficient of k₁=7.1×10^?12 cm³ molecule^?1 s^?1 and a collision efficiency of 1.2 % was determined at 298 K. The strongly electrophilic PyrOO^.+ reacts with 3‐hexyne and 4‐octyne with absolute rate coefficients of k_hexyne=1.5×10^?10 cm³ molecule^?1 s^?1 and k_octyne=2.8×10^?10 cm³ molecule^?1 s^?1, respectively, at 298 K. The reaction of both PyrOO^.+ and AnOO^.+ proceeds by radical addition to the alkyne, whereas propargylic hydrogen abstraction was observed as a very minor pathway only in the reactions involving PyrOO^.+. A major reaction pathway of the vinyl radicals 11 formed upon PyrOO^.+ addition to the alkynes involves γ‐fragmentation of the peroxy O? O bond and formation of PyrO^.+. The PyrO^.+ is rapidly trapped by intermolecular hydrogen abstraction, presumably from a propargylic methylene group in the alkyne. The reaction of the less electrophilic AnOO^.+ with alkynes is considerably slower and resulted in formation of AnO^.+ as the only charged product. These findings suggest that electrophilic aromatic peroxyl radicals act as oxygen atom donors, which can be used to generate α‐oxo carbenes 13 (or isomeric species) from alkynes in a single step. Besides γ‐fragmentation, a number of competing unimolecular dissociative reactions also occur in vinyl radicals 11 . The potential energy diagrams of these reactions were explored with density functional theory and ab initio methods, which enabled identification of the chemical structures of the most important products.     

A Novel Interface for Optimized Coupling of Gas Chromatography and Supersonic Jet Spectroscopy

The laser-based methods Laser Induced Fluorescence (LIF) and Resonance-Enhanced Multi-Photon Ionization (REMPI) can be used as highly selective detection modes for gas chromatography (GC). One major prerequisite for successful application of these detection methods is the availability of appropriate and reliable interfaces between the GC effluent and the molecular beam inlet. When a pulsed supersonic molecular beam (jet) source is used, the analyte molecules are efficiently cooled, allowing maximum selectivity of the laser spectroscopic detection methods. However, several technical problems have to be solved for practical realization of a GC-supersonic jet valve hyphenation. The pulsed jet interface should not interfere with the GC properties and the supersonic molecular beam properties. Further a good working cycle for the conversion from the continuously flowing GC current to the pulsed jet gas flow should be attained. This paper presents a novel setup of a GC-pulsed jet interface. The construction allows temporal and spatial compression of the analyte molecules in jet gas pulse and thus an increase of the detection sensitivity. Moreover, the GC effluent comes into contact only with glass surfaces and not with valve parts like plungers and seals. This reduces memory effects and sample decomposition. The valve setup is tested with a REMPI-TOFMS instrument.     

Hyphenated Mass Spectrometry versus Real-Time Mass Spectrometry Techniques for the Detection of Volatile Compounds from the Human Body

Mass spectrometry (MS) is an analytical technique that can be used for various applications in a number of scientific areas including environmental, security, forensic science, space exploration, agri-food, and numerous others. MS is also continuing to offer new insights into the proteomic and metabolomic fields. MS techniques are frequently used for the analysis of volatile compounds (VCs). The detection of VCs from human samples has the potential to aid in the diagnosis of diseases, in monitoring drug metabolites, and in providing insight into metabolic processes. The broad usage of MS has resulted in numerous variations of the technique being developed over the years, which can be divided into hyphenated and real-time MS techniques. Hyphenated chromatographic techniques coupled with MS offer unparalleled qualitative analysis and high accuracy and sensitivity, even when analysing complex matrices (breath, urine, stool, etc.). However, these benefits are traded for a significantly longer analysis time and a greater need for sample preparation and method development. On the other hand, real-time MS techniques offer highly sensitive quantitative data. Additionally, real-time techniques can provide results in a matter of minutes or even seconds, without altering the sample in any way. However, real-time MS can only offer tentative qualitative data and suffers from molecular weight overlap in complex matrices. This review compares hyphenated and real-time MS methods and provides examples of applications for each technique for the detection of VCs from humans.     

气相色谱-串联质谱法快速测定鸡肉组织中氯羟吡啶残留量

采用气相色谱-串联质谱法快速测定鸡肉组织中的氯羟吡啶残留,样品经乙腈-水提取,冷冻脱脂后,直接以丙酸酐衍生,采用气相色谱-串联质谱(GC-MS/MS)进行分析,多反应监测(MRM)模式检测。结果表明,氯羟吡啶在0.5~40 ng/m L浓度范围内呈良好的线性关系,方法的定量下限为5.0μg/kg,回收率为101.5%~111.8%,相对标准偏差(RSD)小于7.7%。该方法简便、快速、灵敏度高,重现性好,可用于鸡肉组织中氯羟吡啶的快速确证检测。     

硫代樟脑光化学反应的理论研究

运用量子化学方法优化了硫代樟脑的最低5个电子态(S₀, T₁, S₁, T₂和S₂)的结构, 并计算了它们的相对能量. 计算结果表明: S₁, T₁和T₂态的能量非常接近, 而S₂的能量远远高于T₂态, 这与之前对几种小的硫代羰基化合物的研究结论一致. 确定了硫代樟脑分子在T₁态发生β-插入反应和类Norrish II型反应的机理, 计算的势垒相对于S₀的振动零点分别为314.1和332.6 kJ/mol. 在400 nm波长的光的照射下, 分子被激发到S₁态, 此时分子没有足够的能量发生反应, 只能通过内转换回到基态. 当激发光波长在254 nm时, 硫代樟脑分子被激发到S₂态, 这时候体系有了足够的内部能量使反应发生. 实验上已经观察到此激发光波长下, 气态硫代樟脑可以发生β-插入反应和类Norrish II型反应.     

Radical Formation in the Gas‐Phase Ozonolysis of Deprotonated Cysteine

Although the deleterious effects of ozone on the human respiratory system are well‐known, many of the precise chemical mechanisms that both cause damage and afford protection in the pulmonary epithelial lining fluid are poorly understood. As a key first step to elucidating the intrinsic reactivity of ozone with proteins, its reactions with deprotonated cysteine [Cys?H]^? are examined in the gas phase. Reaction proceeds at near the collision limit to give a rich set of products including 1) sequential oxygen atom abstraction reactions to yield cysteine sulfenate, sulfinate and sulfonate anions, and significantly 2) sulfenate radical anions formed by ejection of a hydroperoxy radical. The free‐radical pathway occurs only when both thiol and carboxylate moieties are available, implicating electron‐transfer as a key step in this reaction. This novel and facile reaction is also observed in small cys‐containing peptides indicating a possible role for this chemistry in protein ozonolysis.     

基于稀疏模型的气相色谱-质谱数据解析及其在严重重叠峰解析中的应用

提出一种气相色谱-质谱（GC-MS）数据解析算法。以色谱峰顶点处的质谱作为待测谱,在谱库中检索一定量相关参考谱,求解关于各纯组分色谱响应值的方程。质谱检索采取分步策略,先利用质谱碎片规律建立高速索引进行粗选,然后使用强峰高概率出峰准则和耐挤压性准则排除无关质谱。为求解色谱响应值方程,提出基于稀疏模型的回归算法,相比传统算法,稀疏算法利于提取待测谱的主要结构,避免"过拟合"。实验结果表明,该质谱检索算法具有较高的精度和规模较小的剩余参考谱集,而所提稀疏模型算法可有效解析严重重叠峰。该算法可作为GC-MS重叠峰解析,特别是严重重叠峰解析的一种有效解决方案。     

气相色谱-串联质谱技术分析烟草中的132种农药残留

利用气相色谱-串联质谱(GC-MS/MS)检测技术,建立了检测烟草中的132种农药残留的高灵敏度方法。分析过程中考察了不同萃取溶剂、不同缓冲盐体系、不同净化剂对目标物回收率的影响。最终确定烟草样品以乙腈进行提取,以N-丙基乙二胺(PSA)与碳18(C18E)的混合净化剂进行净化,氮气吹近干后用正己烷-丙酮(9:1, v/v)复溶,过有机滤膜后进行GC-MS/MS测定,内标法定量。132种农药在20～2000 μg/kg之间线性关系良好(r2 ＞0.99);所有农药的方法定量限(LOQ, S/N=10)均低于20 μg/kg;在50、200、500 μg/kg的加标水平下,除灭蚁灵及六氯苯回收率稍低外,其他农药的平均回收率为68.10%～123.15%,相对标准偏差(RSD)为1.79%～19.88%。对国际烟草科学研究合作中心(CORESTA)2012年共同实验的烟草样品进行检测,对比本方法与已有的标准方法,其结果一致性较好。该方法准确、可靠,灵敏度好,适用于烟草中132种农药残留的快速筛查与定性、定量分析。