Analytical tools of chromatography

The characterization of secondary metabolites sent or received by different organisms constitutes a crucial, and often deUcate, step in chemical ecology. Numerous advances in analytical sciences offer ecologists more or less complex alternatives. 

Whatever the nature of the metabolites or the sample, the workflow is always the same and can be summarized in three main steps sampling, analysis and stmctural characterization (with quantification in certain cases). 

Chapter written by Nicolas Barthes, Jean-Claude Caissard, Jeremy Just and Xavier Fernandez. 

Chemical Ecology First Editi L Edited by Anne-Genevieve Bagneres and Maitine Hossaert-Mckey. ISTE Lid 2016. Published by ISTE Lid and John MTiley Sons, Inc. 

The sampling step is often crucial and a source of numerous errors. It is indeed paramount to obtain, and in a repeatable way, an extract representative of the matrix used. The latter can be of different states (gas, liquid or solid) and will be defined based on the characteristics of compounds to be analyzed. 

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