Untersuchungen über die Biosynthese der Cyclite, 20. Mitt.: Über die Bildung vonl-Bornesit inVinca-Arten

Incorporation experiments with radioactively labelledmyo-inositol andd-glucose inVinca minor andVinca rosea make it very probable that in these plantsl-bornesitol is formed through direct methylation ofmyo-inositol.     

Mikrochemie

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Evaluation of a two-stage screening procedure in the combinatorial search for serine protease-like activity

A series of peptidosteroid derivatives containing two independent peptide chains in which Ser and His are incorporated were synthesized by solid-phase peptide synthesis. The activity of the different compounds in the hydrolysis of the activated substrate NF31 was assessed in a stepwise fashion. First, the different resin-bound derivatives 6a-l and 6x-z were individually assayed for serine esterification in the absence of water. The use of a colored substrate allowed for a visual identification of the most active compounds. Through the inclusion of control substances, the involvement of histidine in the mechanism for serine acylation was shown. Second, the hydrolysis and methanolysis of the different acylated derivatives 8a-l and 8x were evaluated using UV spectroscopy, again indicating the involvement of histidine. The feasibility of applying the above procedures in a combinatorial context was proven via the screening of artificial libraries, created by mixing the different resin-bound peptidosteroid compounds. In this respect, the use of a photocleavable linker allowed for the unambiguous structural characterization of the selected members via application of single-bead electrospray tandem mass spectrometry.     

Bioanalytical LC–MS/MS validation of therapeutic drug monitoring assays in oncology

Therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) has shown to benefit patients treated with drugs of many drug classes, among which is oncology. With an increasing demand for drug monitoring, new assays have to be developed and validated. Guidelines for bioanalytical validation issued by the European Medicines Agency and US Food and Drug Administration are applicable for clinical trials and toxicokinetic studies and demand fully validated bioanalytical methods to yield reliable results. However, for TDM assays a limited validation approach is suggested based on the intended use of these methods. This review presents an overview of publications that describe method validation of assays specifically designed for TDM. In addition to evaluating current practice, we provide recommendations that could serve as a guide for future validations of TDM assays.     

Taylor Series Expansion in Discrete Clifford Analysis

Discrete Clifford analysis is a discrete higher-dimensional function theory which corresponds simultaneously to a refinement of discrete harmonic analysis and to a discrete counterpart of Euclidean Clifford analysis. The discrete framework is based on a discrete Dirac operator that combines both forward and backward difference operators and on the splitting of the basis elements $\mathbf{e}_j = \mathbf{e}_j^+ + \mathbf{e}_j^-$ into forward and backward basis elements $\mathbf{e}_j^\pm $ . For a systematic development of this function theory, an indispensable tool is the Taylor series expansion, which decomposes a discrete (monogenic) function in terms of discrete homogeneous (monogenic) building blocks. The latter are the so-called discrete Fueter polynomials. For a discrete function, the authors assumed a series expansion which is formally equivalent to the Taylor series expansion in Euclidean Clifford analysis; however, attention needed to be paid to the geometrical conditions on the domain of the function, the convergence and the equivalence to the given discrete function. We furthermore applied the theory to discrete delta functions and investigated the connection with Shannon sampling theorem (Bell Sys Tech J 27:379–423, 1948). We found that any discrete function admits a series expansion into discrete homogeneous polynomials and any discrete monogenic function admits a Taylor series expansion in terms of the discrete Fueter polynomials, i.e. discrete homogeneous monogenic polynomials. Although formally the discrete Taylor series expansion of a function resembles the continuous Taylor series expansion, the main difference is that there is no restriction on discrete functions to be represented as infinite series of discrete homogeneous polynomials. Finally, since the continuous expansion of the Taylor series expansion of discrete delta functions is a sinc function, the discrete Taylor series expansion lays a link with Shannon sampling.     

Description of a Method for Automated Determination of Organic Pollutants in Water

Abstract

A method for automated determination of 73 organic pollutants in water is described. The compounds, which are key representatives for different types of pollutants are determined in two chromatographic runs. 11 halogenated aliphatic hydrocarbons are determined using capillary GC equipped with electron capture detector. The remaining pollutants, representing both basic/neutral and acidic compounds are determined by using GC/MS combined with an automated search computer program. The majority of the compounds have a limit of quantitation at 1 ig/1 or lower. The precision of the GC method is in the range of 1.8% to 4.3%, with an average of 3.2%. The precision for compounds determined by GC/MS is in the range of 1% to 38%, with an average of 14%.

So far 30 water samples representing both polluted fjord areas as well as effluents from municipal treatment plants, refineries, petrochemical industries and metallurgic industries have been analysed. The method has been found to be an interesting alternative to traditional methods for monitoring water quality, and has demonstrated its potential both as a screening method for detecting “hot spots” as well as for routine monitoring of specific hazardous compounds.     

Stability of mixed PEO-thiol SAMs for biosensing applications

The secret of a successful affinity biosensor partially hides in the chemical interface layer between the transducer system and the biological receptor molecules. Over the past decade, several methodologies for the construction of such interface layers have been developed on the basis of the deposition of self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) of alkanethiols on gold. Moreover, mixed SAMs of polyethylene oxide (PEO) containing thiols have been applied for the immobilization of biological receptors. Despite the intense research in the field of thiol SAMs, relatively little is known about their biosensing properties in correlation with their long-term stability. Especially the impact of the storage conditions on their biosensing characteristics has not been reported before to our knowledge. To address these issues, we prepared mixed PEO SAMs and tested their stability and biosensing performance in several storage conditions, i.e., air, N2, ethanol, phosphate buffer, and H2O. The quality of the SAMs was monitored as a function of time using various characterization techniques such as cyclic voltammetry, contact angle, grazing angle Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. In addition, the impact of the different storage conditions on the biosensor properties was investigated using surface plasmon resonance. Via the latter technique, the receptor immobilization, the analyte recognition, and the nonspecific binding were extensively studied using the prostate specific antigen as a model system. Our experiments showed that very small structural differences in the SAM can have a great impact in their final biosensing properties. In addition it was shown that the mixed SAMs stored in air or N2 are very stable and retain their biosensor properties for at least 30 days, while ethanol appeared to be the worst storage medium due to partial oxidation of the thiol headgroup. In conclusion, care must be taken to avoid SAM degradation during storage to retain typical SAM characteristics, which is very important for their general use in many proposed applications.     

Rapid determination of amino acid incorporation by stable isotope labeling with amino acids in cell culture (SILAC)

Stable isotope labeling with amino acids in cell culture (SILAC) has evolved to be a major technique for quantitative proteomics using cell cultures. We developed a rapid method to follow and determine the incorporation of arginine and lysine. Analysis of the heavy state is required to avoid quantification errors. Moreover, the mixture of light and heavy states can be exploited to normalize the protein amount for subsequent relative quantification experiments. Therefore, peptides from different cell lines were extracted with 0.1% trifluoroacetic acid and analyzed by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization tandem time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF/TOF) mass spectrometry (MS). This analysis was highly reproducible and was performed in less than 2 h, significantly faster than other methods for the same purpose. Similar peptide mass profiles were obtained for human EBV-transformed B, Jurkat T, and HeLa cells as well as for mouse embryonic fibroblasts. Proteolytic fragments of 27 human proteins were identified with 56 peptides by MALDI-MS/MS and can be used as a database for these kinds of experiments. Sequencing revealed that the peptides were predominantly amino- and carboxy-terminal protein fragments displaying a specificity characteristic of the acidic proteases cathepsin D and E. Many of the identified peptides contained arginine and/or lysine, allowing determination of the incorporation rate of these amino acids. Furthermore, the rate of conversion of arginine into proline could be monitored easily.