Application of stir bar sorptive extraction for wine analysis

Stir bar sorptive extraction (SBSE) coupled with gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) was used to analyse wine samples for three applications: flavour and compositional analysis; 2,4,6-trichloroanisole (TCA), a common off-aroma in wine; and agrochemicals. SBSE was found to be orders of magnitude more sensitive than modern conventional methodology, allowing for lower detection and quantitation levels, and improved confirmation of identity; SBSE often gave better signal to noise in scan mode than other methods in selective ion monitoring (SIM) mode. With the help of their characteristic mass spectra all agrochemicals could be identified unambiguously at concentrations of 10 microg L(-1) in wine and a further 100 constituents were detected in a Cabernet Sauvignon sample. Thus it is now possible to analyse complex samples such as wine by scan mode, with better confirmation of identity, and without sacrificing sensitivity, where previously SIM methodology had to be used.     

A Rapidly Reversible Chemical Dimerizer System to Study Lipid Signaling in Living Cells

Chemical dimerizers are powerful tools for non‐invasive manipulation of enzyme activities in intact cells. Here we introduce the first rapidly reversible small‐molecule‐based dimerization system and demonstrate a sufficiently fast switch‐off to determine kinetics of lipid metabolizing enzymes in living cells. We applied this new method to induce and stop phosphatidylinositol 3‐kinase (PI3K) activity, allowing us to quantitatively measure the turnover of phosphatidylinositol 3,4,5‐trisphosphate (PIP₃) and its downstream effectors by confocal fluorescence microscopy as well as standard biochemical methods.     

NMR probe for the simultaneous acquisition of multiple samples.

A dual channel probe for the simultaneous acquisition of NMR data from multiple samples has been developed. This multiplex probe consists of two noninteracting sample coils that are each capable of detecting NMR signals at the same resonant frequency with good sensitivity and resolution. 13C free induction decays for the two samples, methanol (13C, 99%) and carbon tetrachloride (13C, 99%), were acquired simultaneously at 75.44 MHz using a single transmitter pulse and separate NMR receivers. S/N measurements are comparable to those observed using single coils. No evidence of cross talk is evident in the spectra even after considerable signal averaging. The probe demonstrates the feasibility of significant parallelism in NMR, which will be of interest in situations where high throughput analysis is desired.     

NMR analysis of multiple samples using parallel coils: improved performance using reference deconvolution and multidimensional methods

Improvements in the Multiplex Sample NMR method are investigated to explore its capabilities of analyzing multiple samples simultaneously. Issues of quantitation and resolution in the multiple-coil probe are examined in one- and two-dimensional experiments. Improvements in quantitation are shown to result from the use of reference deconvolution for one-dimensional experiments, while the use of two-dimensional methods has much improved resolution and shows the potential for significantly increased parallelism. A multiplicative scheme is shown to be an easily implemented, effective method for generating individual sub-spectra from individual samples.     

Comprehensive investigation and optimisation of the main experimental variables in stir-bar sorptive extraction (SBSE)-thermal desorption-capillary gas chromatography (TD-CGC)

A chemometric study has been completed in order to investigate the relative contributions and interactions between the many experimental variables involved in SBSE-TD-CGC. The study was centered on data after extraction and analysis of important organophosphorous pesticides from water under different controlled conditions. An enhanced flame photometric detector was used for target compound area response. The seemingly independent operations of extraction with the stir bar followed by thermal transfer of the absorbed compounds to the chromatographic system are usually studied by independent designs for the corresponding blocks of variables. In this work all variables are treated at the same time in a single design to study the interactions and give a more robust model while requiring a lower number of experiments. The relative importance of contributing variables was clearly established and an optimum set of conditions was established for more uniform enrichment in a single analysis for a test mix of compounds with wide ranging polarities.     

Direct quantification of ethyl carbamate in distilled alcoholic beverages using a cold capillary injection system and optimised selected ion monitoring

Summary An integrated procedure is described which allows direct injection quantitative screening to single figure parts per billion (g/L) levels of ethyl carbamate in the natural matrix of distilled alcoholic beverage. Injection and detection performance was studied and optimized to allow this routine, reproducible, trace analysis without any sample pre-treatment. All aspects of the analysis including autosampler run sequences and automated internal standard report generation are initiated and controlled from a single GC/MS workstation.Excerpt from the Ph. D. Thesis (in preparation) of K. MacNamara, Universität Karlsruhe     

NMR difference probe: a dual-coil probe for NMR difference spectroscopy

A unique probe designed to acquire nuclear magnetic resonance difference spectra of two samples is presented. The NMR Difference Probe contains two sample coils in a resonant circuit that switches between parallel excitation and serial acquisition to cancel common signals such as solvent peaks and impurities. Two samples containing a common analyte, acetonitrile, were used to demonstrate signal cancellation in a difference spectrum collected with a single pulse experiment. The cancellation was over 96% effective. The approach described has applications in the areas of solvent subtraction and spectral simplification.     

Krylov and steady-state techniques for the solution of the chemical master equation for the mitogen-activated protein kinase cascade

Models of chemical kinetics in which some reactions are much faster than others are often treated by a type of quasi-steady-state approximation (QSSA). The total QSSA (tQSSA) was introduced for models of Michaelis-Menten enzyme kinetics and shown to be valid over a wider parameter regime than the usual QSSA. Here, we extend the tQSSA to the Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase Cascade, an important signaling system in cell biochemistry. These approximations were first developed in a deterministic setting, but here we also describe how to incorporate this approximation into the discrete and stochastic framework of the Chemical Master Equation (CME). The CME gives rise to a large-scale matrix exponential that can be solved by Krylov methods in combination with operator splitting and the tQSSA.