Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometry (IRMS) is a specialized technique used to provide information about the geographic, chemical, and biological origins of substances. The ability to determine the source of an organic substance stems from the relative isotopic abundances of the elements which comprise the material. Because the isotope ratios of elements such as carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, sulfur, and...

graphy (LC) has been used for identification of proteins excised from 1-D or 2-D gels. The automated nature of protein database searching using uninterpreted MS/MS data (4), the low femtomole sensitivity and the ability to identify a protein based on a single MS/MS product ion spectrum allow the identification of more than 100 proteins per day. Thus, extensive protein identifications have been ...

Glycosylation is a common post-translational modification to cell surface and extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins as well as to lipids. As a result, cells carry a dense coat of carbohydrates on their surfaces that mediates a wide variety of cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions that are crucial to development and function. Because of the historical difficulties with the analysis of complex car...

This review presents an overview of the dynamically developing field of mass spectrometry-based metabolomics. Metabolomics aims at the comprehensive and quantitative analysis of wide arrays of metabolites in biological samples. These numerous analytes have very diverse physico-chemical properties and occur at different abundance levels. Consequently, comprehensive metabolomics investigations ar...

Miniaturization of laboratory instrumentation is becoming critical in achieving the speed and throughput required by the current revolutionary progress in biology. This mini review critically summarizes the present status of microfluidic devices designed for use in mass spectrometry.

In this article, selected examples of applications of liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry are given. The examples include the analysis of i) impurities in manufactured, pharmaceutical or synthesis products, ii) polyphenols in natural products, and iii) phytohormones in plant extracts. Finally, examples of applications of molecular characterization via flow injection analysis by e...

Mass spectrometry (MS), which has advanced rapidly in recent years, is expected to become the tool of choice for high-throughput analysis of relationships between structures and functions of glycans. The structural analysis of glycans using MS employs a number of methods for pretreatment, derivatization, and interpretation. However, since none of these are universally applicable, researchers ha...

Mass spectrometry (MS) offers advantages over conventional spectroscopic assays because it enables structural determination of reactants while preserving temporal resolution. The ability to detect short-lived reaction intermediates or labile metabolites makes time-resolved MS (TRMS) measurements an enabling tool for studies of chemical reactions, chemical kinetics and biochemical dynamics. High...

Gas chromatography (GC) is a widely applied technique in many branches of science and technology. For over half a century, GC has played a fundamental role in determining how many components and in what proportion they exist in a mixture. However, the ability to establish the nature and chemical structure of these separated and quantified compounds is ambiguous and reduced, and requires a spect...