Hybrid-Massenspektrometer

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The herein requested mass spectrometer shall be coupled to a liquid chromatography unit to identify and quantify organic compounds in complex solute mixtures.The device shall be employed for the analysis of aqueous, metabolic extracts of life cells. The envisaged main applications are 13C-based metabolic flux and metabolome analyses of microbial production strains, which operate synthetic metabolic pathways to produce value-added compounds. When synthetic metabolic pathways are implemented in life cells, frequently an unexpected physiological response of the engineered cells is observed which may manifest in altered metabolic flux distributions or in retarded growth. This unwanted physiological response may be caused by the accumulation of unknown metabolites, which are synthesized by unknown cross-reactivities of natural enzymes on the new, synthetic metabolic intermediates. Alternatively, they may occur due to uncharacterized activities of synthetic enzymes on natural metabolites. For the identification of these unknown metabolic intermediates we require a mass spectrometer which provides an extremely high accuracy and resolution in the measurement of molecular masses. The development of new synthetic metabolic pathways and the corresponding microbial production strains is a main focus of our future research. Only when our current analytical capacities are complemented by such a mass-spectrometer these research activities can be efficiently conducted.