Neutral, analytical high-performance liquid chromatography

Sample preparation for analysis by hyphenated methods requires some additional planning when compared to nonhyphenated methods. All steps, extraction, concentration, and final solvent selection must take into consideration and be compatible with all the components of the hyphenated instrumentation. For gas chromatographic methods, all the components in the mixture must be in the gaseous state. For liquid chromatography (LC) or high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), the samples of the analytes of interest can be solids or liquids, neutral or charged molecules, or ions, but they must be in solution. If the follow-on analysis is by MS, then each of the analytes may require a different method of introduction into the MS. Metals and metal ions may be introduced by HPLC if they are in solution but commonly are introduced via AAS or inductively coupled plasma (ICP). Other analytes may be directly introduced from HPLC to MS [2],... 

Superior sensitivity, efficiency, and specificity have made high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS), the predominant analytical technique for characterization and quantitative analysis of metabolites (Kostiainen et al., 2003 Ma et al., 2006 Prakash et al., 2007). Ion trap, triple-quadrupole, and quadmpole time-of-flight (Q-TOF) mass spectrometers are routinely used to profile and characterize metabolites in plasma and excreta (Ma et al., 2006). The combination of scan types and features available on mass spectrometers of different design (product ion, MS", neutral loss, precursor ion scans, accurate mass measurements) allows identification and characterization of putative and unexpected metabolites with or without little prior knowledge of biotransformation pathways of a given dmg molecule. 

Takemoto H, Hase S, and Ikenaka T (1985) Microquanti-tative analysis of neutral and amino sugars as fluorescent pyridylamino derivatives by high-performance liquid chromatography. Analytical Biochemistry 145 245-250. 

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