Česká společnost pro hmotnostní spektrometrii

(2. konference České společnosti pro hmotnostní spektrometrii - PL-2)
Hyphenating mass spectrometry: now and then

Milos Novotny ^1 *

1. Department of Chemistry, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA

Abstrakt

The first demonstrations of the resolving power of highly efficient capillary columns in GC (mostly for hydrocarbons) during the 1960 left the chromatography practitioners facing a big problem: now that we can prove that our samples are really complex, what is their actual molecular composition? The retention data gathering then preoccupied many laboratories, while in a different scientific community (mass spectrometry), the experiments were underway to combine GC with mass spectrometry (MS). Poor performance of chromatographic columns in the early GC-MS work did not bother mass spectrometrists a great deal, while few separation scientists were in possession of these complicated, expensive and, at times, unpredictable machines. After a brief era of research on “molecule separators” in GC-MS, technological advances of the early 1970s enabled a straightforward coupling of capillary GC to MS and practically retired packed GC columns for most applications. Within a decade, GC-MS became nearly routine, and we then worried a lot about how to couple LC with MS. Coincidentally, new ionization techniques in MS made it almost suddenly possible to analyze large biological molecules, and ultimately, permit LC-MS and various other “hyphenations” to occur. Today’s methods of biochemical analysis are entirely dependent on various combinations of capillary separation techniques and MS, as is being amply demonstrated in the fields of proteomics, glycomics and metabolomics. While these methodologies provide biologists and medical scientists with new tools of discovery, further advances in instrumentation and bioanalytical chemistry are still desirable for the benefits of disease biomarker discovery, systems biology, and design of modern pharmaceuticals through recombinant technologies.

* Korespondující autor: novotny@indiana.edu