Alkane elimination from ionized alkanols

The energetics, metastable characteristics and daughter ion structures for the loss of small alkane molecules from ionized 2-propanol, 2-butanol and 3-pentanol have been examined in detail. [2-Propanol]^+˙ ions lose CH₄ to generate the keto and enol forms of [C₂H₄O]^+˙ and the same daughter ions are produced by loss of C₂H₆ from [2-butanol]^+˙. Ionized 3-pentanol does not lose CH₄ but readily eliminates C₂H₆ to produce the enol ion [CH₃CH?CHOH]^+˙. The last reaction was shown to proceed by a simple 1,2 elimination mechanism in the μs time-frame; isotope effects are also discussed.     

Collisionally induced dissociative ionization of neutral products from unimolecular ion fragmentations. 1—Neutral product structures

A method is described for the investigation of the structure of neutral products from the unimolecular (metastable) dissociative ionizations of mass selected ions, by means of the collisionally induced dissociative ionization of the neutral species themselves. The neutral species, with kilovolt translational energies, enter a positively charged collision cell situated in the second field free region of a standard ZAB-2F mass spectrometer. Dissociative ionization of the neutrals results therein from their collisions with He target gas. The resulting ions are analysed by means of the electric sector and the relative ion abundances are shown to be structure characteristic. For such experiments the neutral flux should be c. ≥ 0.5% of the selected precursor ion flux; the collision gas pressure must be insufficient to cause significant precursor ion fragmentation in the field free region preceding the collision cell. It was shown that HNC is generated in the fragmentation of aniline molecular ions, whereas HCN is the neutral product in the dissociative ionizations of pyridine, benzonitrile and benzyl cyanide. The neutral radical [C, H₃, O˙] formed together with [CH₃CO]⁺ from ionized methyl acetate has the structure ˙CH₂OH, but that from the analogous fragmentation of the methyl propanoate molecular ion has the structure CH₃O˙. Allyl radicals were shown to be generated from [(CH₃)₂CHCH₂OH]⁺˙ together with [CH₃OH₂]⁺ ions.     

Highly sensitive quantification of pemetrexed in human plasma using UPLC-MS/MS to support microdosing studies

Pemetrexed is an antifolate drug approved for the treatment of non-small-cell lung cancer and mesothelioma. Assessing pemetrexed pharmacokinetics after administration of a microdose (100 μg) may facilitate drug–drug interaction and dose individualization studies with cytotoxic drugs, without causing harm to patients. Therefore, a highly sensitive bioanalytical assay is required. A reversed-phase ultra-high performance liquid chromatography method was developed to determine pemetrexed concentrations in human ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid–plasma after microdosing. [¹³C₅]-Pemetrexed was used as the internal standard. The sample preparation involved solid-phase extraction from plasma. Detection was performed using MS/MS in a total run time of 9.5 min. The assay was validated over the concentration range of 0.0250–25.0 μg/L pemetrexed. The average accuracies for the assay in plasma were 96.5 and 96.5%, and the within-day and between-day precision in coefficients of variations was <8.8%. Extraction recovery was 59 ± 1 and 55 ± 5% for pemetrexed and its internal standard. Processed plasma samples were stable for 2 days in a cooled autosampler at 10°C. The assay was successfully applied in a pharmacokinetic curve, which was obtained as a part of an ongoing clinical microdosing study.     

Masses of S and P wave mesons and pseudoscalar decay constants using a confinement scheme

In the framework of relativistic harmonic confinement model for quarks and antiquarks, the masses of S- and P-wave mesons and pseudoscalar decay constants from light flavour to heavy flavour sectors are computed. The residual two-body Coulomb interaction and the spin-dependent interaction of the confined one gluon exchange effects (COGEP) such as spin-spin and spin-orbit interactions are perturbatively incorporated with the confinement energy to get the respective vector-pseudoscalar meson mass differences. Here we employ the same parametrization and model parameters as used in a recent study of low-lying hadron masses and leptonic decay widths. The results are being compared with the values obtained from other theoretical models and the experimental values.     

One electron less or one proton more: how do they differ?

From the NIST website and the literature, we have collected the Ionisation Energies (IE) of 3,052 and the Proton Affinities (PA) of 1,670 compounds. For 614 of these, both the IE and PA are known; this enables a study of the relationships between these quantities for a wide variety of molecules. From the IE and PA values, the hydrogen atom affinities (HA) of molecular ions M^?+ may also be assessed. The PA may be equated to the heterolytic bond energy of [MH]⁺ and HA to the homolytic bond energy. Plots of PA versus IE for these substances show (in agreement with earlier studies) that, for many families of molecules, the slope of the ensuing line is less negative than ?1, i.e. changes in the PA are significantly less than the concomitant opposite changes in IE. At one extreme (high PA, low IE) are the metals, their oxides and hydroxides, which show a slope of close to ?1, at the other extreme (low PA, high IE) are the hydrogen halides, methyl halides and noble gases, which show a slope of ca. ?0.3; other molecular categories show intermediate behaviour. One consequence of a slope less negative than ?1 is that the changes in ionic enthalpies of the protonated species more closely follow the changes in the enthalpies of the neutral molecules compared with changes in the ion enthalpies of the corresponding radical cations. This is consistent with findings from ab initio calculations from the literature that the incoming proton, once attached to the molecule, may retain a significant amount of its charge. These collected data allow a comparison of the thermodynamic stability of protonated molecules in terms of their homolytic or heterolytic bond cleavages. Protonated nitriles are particularly stable by virtue of the very large hydrogen atom affinities of their radical cations.     

HOC+: Laboratory observation of a proposed interstellar species

The ion [HOC⁺] together with some [HC⁺O] is generated by the dissociative ionisation of CD₃OH. Collisional activation mass spectral characteristics of the two isomers are reported. ΔH_f ([HOC⁺]) is estimated to be 930 ± 20 kJ mol^?1.     

The use of metastable ion characteristics for the determination of ion structures of some isomeric cannabinoids

The mechanism of formation of the prominent C₁₅H₁₉O₂ ion at m/e 231 in the mass spectra of Δ¹⁽⁶⁾-tetrahydrocannabinol and five isomeric cannabinoids has been investigated. Except via a well-documented two step process, involving an RDA mechanism, a sizeable percentage of these ions is formed by a novel one-step route from the molecular ion. This was deduced from the spectra of deuterium-labelled compounds and measurements of the kinetic energy release of metastable ions. The latter value for the one step process varies from 25–44 meV for the six compounds investigated, attributed to two interdependent effects, different transition state geometries and common transition states differing in the time elapsing before their formation.     

Collisionally induced dissociative ionization of neutral products from ion fragmentations. 2—Collision gas effects and related phenomena

The ion retardation method (whereby an ion beam is prevented from entering a collision gas cell by means of a voltage applied thereto) for permitting the examination of the neutral products of unimolecular ion fragmentations has been extended to include observations of neutral products generated by collisions before the gas cell and their related phenomenology. Observations obtained using an ion beam deflection electrode, an alternative method of preventing the ion beam from entering the collision cell, are also reported. When low collision gas pressures are employed (<2×10^?7 Torr He), this latter method provides collisionally induced dissociative ionization (CIDI) mass spectra of unimolecularly generated neutral fragmentation products, free of complications arising from events induced by collisions occurring outside the collision cell. The CIDI mass spectra of CH₃˙, C₂H₄, CH₃?O, CH₃OH and C₂H₆ generated from positive ion precursors and CH₃˙, CH₃O˙ and C₆H₅NO₂ generated by electron loss from negative ions are described.     

Phosphorylation of nucleoside derivatives with aryl phosphoramidochloridates

The preparation of three aryl phosphorocyclohexylamidochloridates (7a, 7b and 7c) and an aryl phosphoromorpholidochloridate (8) is described. These aryl phosphoramidochloridates react with 2′,3′-O-methoxymethylene-uridine, -4-N-anisoylcytidine and -6-N-anisoyladenosine (9a, 9b and 9c, respectively), in the presence of the 1-ethylimidazole derivative (11a) to give high yields of the corresponding fully-protected 5′-phosphoramidates (10). Treatment of the latter compounds with aqueous alkali gives the nucleoside 5′-phosphoramidate derivatives (14) which, on mild acidic hydrolysis, give the corresponding unprotected 5′-nucleotides (15) in virtually quantitative yields. Phosphorylation of 2′-O-methoxytetrahydropyranyluridine (12) with 7a and 8, under the same conditions, occurs regiospecifically to give the corresponding 5′-phosphoramidate derivatives (13). The partially-protected dinucleoside phosphate (16b) has been prepared and phosphorylated with 7a to give, after removal of the protecting groups, the dinucleotide (18, pUpU) in high yield.