Comprehensive study of condensed tannins by ESI mass spectrometry: average degree of polymerisation and polymer distribution determination from mass spectra

The determination of the molecular mass distribution of tannins is still a challenge. To elucidate it, mass spectrometry is potentially interesting, but many previous studies have highlighted that the mass spectra of a tannin fraction do not always reflect the actual abundance of different chain lengths. To clarify the potentialities offered by the MS approach, a comprehensive study involving different tannin fractions analysed under different conditions was conducted with an electrospray ionization (ESI) source. This study allowed optimised ESI-MS conditions to be established for analysing tannins but also it outlines the limits of detection encountered. If the detection of high molecular weight tannins seems difficult or even impossible, the spectral distortions brought about by this limitation are not totally related to the sole average degree of polymerisation of the tannin fraction studied but greatly depend on its polymer distribution. However, ESI-MS used under optimised conditions is a suitable method to study tannin composition of vegetable extracts which contain degree of polymerisations below 26.     

Determination and prediction of the average polymerization degree of alkyl polyglucosides

Synthetic alkyl polyglucosides (APG) result from the Fischer reaction of glucose with a fatty alcohol. Monoalkylated glucose further reacts with free glucose under the same conditions to yield APG. Determination of the average polymerization degree (PD) is a problem that has no simple and practical solution. The proposed method relies on gas chromatography measurements. The PD calculation uses the Flory polymerization model and requires the experimental evaluation of the molar fractions of monoglucosides and unreacted fatty alcohol. The number of truly reactive centers in glucose is a key parameter, whose value is determined from a thorough analysis of literature data. The results show that glucose behaves as a bifonctional molecule. Kinetic simulations support the employed methodology.     

Application of Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and orthogonal projections to latent structures/partial least squares regression for estimation of procyanidins average degree of polymerisation

Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy has being emphasised as a widespread technique in the quick assess of food components. In this work, procyanidins were extracted with methanol and acetone/water from the seeds of white and red grape varieties. A fractionation by graded methanol/chloroform precipitations allowed to obtain 26 samples that were characterised using thiolysis as pre-treatment followed by HPLC-UV and MS detection. The average degree of polymerisation (DPn) of the procyanidins in the samples ranged from 2 to 11 flavan-3-ol residues. FTIR spectroscopy within the wavenumbers region of 1800-700 cm⁻¹ allowed to build a partial least squares (PLS1) regression model with 8 latent variables (LVs) for the estimation of the DPn, giving a RMSECV of 11.7%, with a R² of 0.91 and a RMSEP of 2.58. The application of orthogonal projection to latent structures (O-PLS1) clarifies the interpretation of the regression model vectors. Moreover, the O-PLS procedure has removed 88% of non-correlated variations with the DPn, allowing to relate the increase of the absorbance peaks at 1203 and 1099 cm⁻¹ with the increase of the DPn due to the higher proportion of substitutions in the aromatic ring of the polymerised procyanidin molecules.     

Trends in flow-based analytical methods applied to pesticide detection: a review

Landfilling is the most common disposal of municipal waste. During the decomposition of different waste materials, several toxic compounds are leached. Although organotin compounds (OTC) represent an important group of pollutants in landfill leachates, there are only few analytical procedures reported for their analysis. These procedures are complex or recommend the use of enriched stable isotopes that are available only for butyltins. In the present work analytical procedure for simultaneous routine speciation analysis of methyl-, butyl-, phenyl- and octyl-tins in landfill leachates by GC-ICP-MS was developed. For this purpose the applicability of methanol as co-extraction reagent and Tris-citrate buffer for adjustment of pH for derivatization of OTC in landfill leachates was carefully investigated. The use of NaBEt(4) and NaBPr(4) as derivatization reagents for liquid-liquid extraction into hexane was critically evaluated. 15m GC column was used for rapid separation of OTC. The developed analytical procedure was sensitive (LODs for OTC investigated in general better than 2 ng Sn L(-1)) with good repeatability of measurement (RSDs mostly better than 3%) and was successfully applied in the analysis of OTC in landfill leachates using standard addition calibration method. Due to its simplicity and reliability it is appropriate to be used in routine laboratories for monitoring of OTC in landfill leachates.     

Determination of patulin in apple juice: comparative evaluation of four analytical methods

The performance of 4 purification methods for the analysis of patulin in apple juice was evaluated by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Samples were spiked with patulin at 10, 20, 50, 100, and 150 ppb (ng/mL) and extracted by one of 4 methods (3 solid-phase extraction and one liquid-liquid extraction), and then analyzed by HPLC-UV under the same isocratic conditions. The methods were validated for recovery, linearity, and precision at high and low concentrations. Recoveries were all >70% for spiking range 10-150 ppb. The relative standard deviation for repeatability was found to meet European Union Directive requirements. In addition, all the methods showed baseline separation from hydroxymethylfurfural.     

Determination of interfacial tension from crystallization and dissolution data: a comparison with other methods

Methods for the determination of interfacial tension between a solid and a liquid are reviewed including solubility/particle size, crystallization and dissolution kinetics. The use of solubility as a function of particle size, originally put forward by Ostwald and later corrected by Freundlich, may be unjustified for determining interfacial tension at solid-liquid interfaces. The interfacial tension values between solutions and sparingly soluble minerals such as hydroxyapatite, fluorapatite, brushite, octacalcium phosphate, calcium oxalate monohydrate, barium sulfate, calcium sulfate, calcite, and divalent metal fluorides are discussed. A comparison of these results is made with contact angle or wetting measurements. The interfacial tension values obtained from constant composition reaction kinetics are of the same order of magnitude as those determined using a contact angle method involving thin layer wicking techniques.     

Depth-sensing indentation applied to polymers: A comparison between standard methods of analysis in relation to the nature of the materials

Mechanical data (hardness and elastic modulus) from instrumented indentation testing are often extracted assuming linear elasticity in the initial portion of the unloading. The method is nowadays widely accepted as a convenient tool to interpret depth-sensing data, however it is a matter of controversy when applied to polymer materials due to their time-dependent behavior. More recently, Loubet and co-workers applied continuous stiffness measurements (CSM), consisting of superimposing a small oscillation to the quasi-static component of loading, to the study of the mechanical properties of polymers and proposed a new model to account for the apparent increase in the contact area detected at the first stages of contact. The present work offers a comparative study between the Loubet’s model using CSM and the procedure yielding a single reading from the onset of unloading. A wide range of thermoplastic polymer materials including glassy and semicrystalline polymers have been investigated. The most important equations employed for each method are summarized and the advantages and disadvantages of employing one procedure or the other are discussed. The differences found between the results obtained from both approaches are discussed in relation to the nature of the polymer material. A comparison between mechanical data extracted from indentation measurements and from classical dynamic mechanical analysis is offered.     

Determination of creatinine in serum by high-performance liquid chromatography: a comparison of three ion-exchange methods

Three ion-exchange high-performance liquid chromatographic methods for the determination of creatinine in serum have been compared. In method 1 a strong cation exchanger was used. In method 2 a reversed-phase column was given strong cation-exchange properties by the addition of N-methyloleoyl taurate to the mobile phase. In method 3 a weak cation exchanger was used. Elution was with a pH gradient in methods 1 and 2, and isocratic elution was used in method 3. The imprecision was similar for the three methods and varied between 0.9 and 2.5% as studied within-day and between 1.4 and 3.2% from day-to-day. The lowest coefficient of variation was obtained around the upper reference limit. Analytical recoveries were quantitative for the three methods. The method with N-methyloleoyl taurate showed no advantages over the conventional strong cation exchanger. With the weak cation exchanger no interferences were detected from compounds investigated, but with the strong cation exchanger a slight interference was obtained with uric acid. We prefer the weak cation-exchange method because of its simplicity, higher throughput and absence of interference from hitherto tested compounds.     

MCD of partially oriented molecules: a new experimental method in molecular spectroscopy

The MCD in anisotropic media is reported here for the first time, and is illustrated with measurements of anthracene oriented in a liquid crystalline matrix. The calculation of the elements of the MCD-tensor reveals the contribution of transition with out-of-plane polarization to the experimental MCD spectrum, a point that has experimentally not been observed before.     

Determination of pesticides and their degradation products in soil: critical review and comparison of methods

Pesticides are applied widely to protect plants from disease, weeds and insect damage, and usually come into contact with soil, where they undergo a variety of transformations that provide a complex pattern of metabolites. This article reviews the most relevant analytical methods for determining pesticides and their transformation products in soils. We address some recent advances in sampling and sample-preparation technologies for soil analysis. We discuss and critically evaluate procedures, such as liquid extraction methods (pressurized liquid extraction or microwave-assisted extraction) and solid-phase based methods (headspace solid-phase microextraction, solid-phase microextraction or matrix-solid-phase dispersion). Analysis of pesticides is generally carried out by gas chromatography (GC) or liquid chromatography (LC) coupled to different detectors, especially to mass spectrometers (MSs). However, alternative and/or complementary methods, using capillary electrophoresis (CE), biosensors and bioassays have emerged recently. We also consider the advantages and the disadvantages of the various methodologies.     

Determination of cyclosporine A in whole blood: comparison of a chromatographic method with three different immunological methods

Cyclosporine A is potent immunosuppressive agent characterized by a narrow therapeutic range, inter- and intra-individual variability and a lack of correlation between drug dosage and blood levels. In view of these facts, blood levels of CyA should be routinely monitored to assess organ rejection and toxicity.

We evaluated CyA as well as its metabolites (AM9, AM19, AMl, and AM4N) in whole blood samples from 117 patients using commercially available immunological assays (AxSYM, EMIT, Dimension) and HPLC.

Cross-reactivity of the immunological assays was evaluated using different concentrations of the CyA metabolites (in vitro cross-reactivity) and by statistical analysis of patient data (in vivo cross-reactivity). Cross-reactivity was seen in all immunological assays, with differences in in vitro and in vivo cross-reactivity.

The statistical analysis showed a classical correlation between HPLC and AxSYM of r² = 0.89, HPLC versus EMIT of r² = 0.93, and HPLC versus Dimension of r² = 0.93.

The percentage metabolite cross-reactivity (%) by immunological assays for four metabolites at two concentrations each (250 and 1000 ng ml⁻¹) was lowest with the Dimension assay.

Of the immunological methods examined, the new Dimension for CyA determination can be relied on to produce results comparable to HPLC; other advantages are its simplicity, practicability and ease of handling.     

Determination of methyl tert-butyl ether in gasoline: a comparison of three fast methods based on mass spectrometry

A high-speed quantitative analysis of methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) using three different methods with mass spectrometry detection has been performed. The first method is based on fast chromatography and required an analysis time of 5.23 min per sample, although a certain period (6 min) was necessary for the initial measurement conditions to be regained prior to analysing the next sample. The other two are non-separative methods and are based on direct injection and headspace generation. The analysis times were 1.5 and 3.5 min, respectively, although in the latter case an additional period of time was required to extract volatiles from the sample. The analytical characteristics of all three methods are highly satisfactory in terms of linearity, lack of fit, precision and accuracy. The methods were applied to the determination of MTBE in different gasoline samples. The non-separative methods afforded slightly higher concentrations than those found when fast chromatography was used; this is due to the presence of other minor components that contribute to the abundance of the ion at m/z 73, characteristic of MTBE. We propose a correction that removes this error very satisfactorily and allows the same results to be obtained with all three methodologies proposed.     

Structure and fragmentation mechanisms of isomeric T-rich oligodeoxynucleotides: A comparison of four tandem mass spectrometric methods

Understanding the product-ion spectra of T-rich tetradeoxynucleotides is a starting point in the development of a mass spectrometric scheme to determine the mutagenicity of individual types of DNA damage. We obtained product-ion spectra for electrospray-produced ions that were activated in the ion source (electrospray ionization-source collision-activated-dissociation) and by high-energy collisions in the MS/MS mode of a four-sector instrument. We also activated singly and doubly charged ions by low-energy collisions in an ion-trap mass spectrometer and investigated post source decompositions of matrix-assisted laser desorbed ions in a time-of-flight mass spectrometer. The various methods of extracting structural information give remarkably consistent results. The difference in the relative abundances of w _n and d _n ions of the singly charged oligonucleotides and the formation of [a₃ ? B₃] ions, where B₃ is the base on the third position, are effective for identification and distinction of pairs of isomeric tetranucleotides. A sufficient number of tetramers and pentamers were studied to enable us to propose a charge-remote mechanism for the formation of site-specific [a _n ? B _n ] ion.     

Moisture sorption in polyamide 6.6: Experimental investigation and comparison to four physical-based models

Water sorption in polyamide 6.6 has been characterized for a wide range of temperature (25°C to 80°C) and various water activities using a Dynamic Vapor Sorption testing machine. Complex sorption mechanisms govern the water uptake in the material. The competition between two main temperature dependant mechanisms has been observed: a Henry's sorption mechanism that mainly governs the sorption curve at low water activities, and a second mechanism at high water activities that could be related to the formation of water clusters. It is observed that the temperature dependency can mainly be attributed to the Henry's contribution. Four physically based models are then used and identified thanks to the extended experimental database. It is shown that a simple Flory-Huggins model is not able to capture the experimental observations at very high water activities for all the temperatures tested. The ENSIC model is a better choice, but good prediction for very high water activity cannot be obtained. Both modified Park and GAB models can accurately predict the volume fraction of water for the whole ranges of water activity and temperature, although the modified Park model should be preferred considering the number of parameters and the mathematical simplicity.     

Glycosylation of glycopeptides: a comparison of chemoenzymatic and chemical methods

Glycosylating complex molecules remains a major synthetic challenge, making it hard to explore carbohydrate diversity in biologically active glycosylated natural products and their derivatives. In this paper we compare the efficiency of chemical and enzymatic methods for glycosylation of glycopeptides related to vancomycin and describe the parameters that should be considered in designing synthetic approaches to glycosylated natural product derivatives.     

Determination of N-acetylator phenotype using caffeine as a probe compound: a comparison of high-performance liquid chromatography and capillary electrophoresis methods.

A test for determining N-acetylator metabolic phenotype has been developed using caffeine as a probe drug. A spot sample of urine is taken, and the unextracted urine is then analysed by micellar electrokinetic capillary chromatography. Phenotype is determined from the peak-area ratio of urinary 5-acetylamino-6-formylamino-3-methyluracil to 1-methylxanthine. Phenotype assignments using this method were compared with those made using a standard high-performance liquid chromatography assay, with good agreement between the two methods. The advantage of the capillary electrophoresis analysis is that no sample extraction is necessary, resulting in a total analysis time of around 20 min, and removing a potential source of error.     

Determination of carbohydrate-deficient transferrin in human serum by two capillary zone electrophoresis methods and a direct immunoassay: comparison of patient data

Data obtained with two CZE assays for determining carbohydrate-deficient transferrin (CDT) in human serum under routine conditions, the CAPILLARYS CDT and the high-resolution CEofix (HR-CEofix) CDT methods, are in agreement with patient sera that do not exhibit interferences, high trisialo-transferrin (Tf) levels or genetic variants. HR-CEofix CDT levels are somewhat higher compared to those obtained with the CAPILLARYS method and this bias corresponds to the difference of the upper reference values of the two assays. The lower resolution between disialo-Tf and trisialo-Tf observed in the CAPILLARYS system (mean: 1.24) compared to HR-CEofix (mean: 1.74) is believed to be the key for this difference. For critical sera with high trisialo-Tf levels, genetic variants, or certain interferences in the beta-region, the HR-CEofix approach is demonstrated to perform better than CAPILLARYS. However, the determination of CDT with the HR-CEofix method can also be hampered with interferences. Results with disialo-Tf values larger than 3% in the absence of asialo-Tf should be evaluated with immunosubtraction of Tf and possibly also confirmed with another CZE method or by HPLC. Furthermore, data gathered with the N Latex CDT direct immunonephelometric assay suggest that this assay can be used for screening purposes. To reduce the number of false negative results, CDT data above 2.0% should be confirmed using a separation method.