Acquisition of a Liquid Chromatography Mass Spectrometry System (LC-MS) at Lehman College

本ARI（学术研究基础设施）申请要求为雷曼学院化学系和生物系提供高压液相色谱-质谱联用系统。这个系统将有利于三位教员的研究，以及一位生物系新教员的研究。雷曼学院有资格作为一个少数族裔机构。高效液相色谱-质谱联用技术是一种新的、强有力的天然产物分析技术。在一个步骤中，它允许研究人员检测，分离，并执行混合物中的物质的初步结构表征。由于所研究的混合物可能有数百种成分，因此可以在一次实验中轻松分析数百种化合物。该系统的高压液相色谱（HPLC）组件是已知分离小分子和大分子有机分子的最强大的方法。天然物质的每个细胞中都有数千个这样的分子。在每次HPLC运行中，可以看到数百个峰。然而，这些峰不容易在一个简单的高效液相色谱仪器中识别。在简单的高效液相色谱设备中进行化合物鉴定通常取决于从其他来源获得标准化合物，并证明该标准化合物在几种溶剂体系中具有与所讨论的高效液相色谱峰相同的迁移率和紫外光谱。在天然混合物中看到的大多数高效液相色谱峰仍然是未知的，因为不容易通过直觉和偶然发现适当的参考化合物。该仪器的质谱仪（MS）组件从HPLC中提取每个流出峰，将其分解成离子，并确定每个所得离子的质量。通常可以通过每个HPLC峰的质量和破碎模式来确定每个HPLC流出物的初步结构鉴定。有了初步的鉴定，通过使用参比化合物或通过计算机搜索MS碎片图谱库来确定阳性鉴定就简单多了。

This ARI (Academic Research Infrastructure) Application requests a high pressure liquid chromatography-mass spectrometer (HPLC-MS) system for the Chemistry and Biology departments at Lehman College. This system will facilitate the research of three faculty members, as well as the research of a new faculty member in the Biology Department. Lehman College qualifies as a Minority Institution. HPLC-MS is a new and powerful technique for the analysis of natural products. In one step, it allows researchers to detect, separate, and perform a preliminary structural characterization of substances in a mixture. Since the mixtures under study can have hundreds of components, it allows easy analysis of hundreds of compounds in one experiment. The high pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) component of the system is the most powerful method known to separate small and large organic molecules. Natural materials have thousands of such molecules in each cell. In each HPLC run, hundreds of peaks can be seen. However, these peaks cannot easily be identified in a simple HPLC apparatus. Compound identification in a simple HPLC apparatus depends typically on the availability of a reference compound from other sources and demonstrating that the reference compound has the same mobility and UV spectrum in several solvent systems as does the HPLC peak in question. Most HPLC peaks seen in natural mixtures remain unidentified since it is not easy to find, by intuition and chance, the appropriate reference compounds. The Mass Spectrometer (MS) component of the instrument takes each effluent peak from the HPLC, fragments it into ions, and determines the mass of each resulting ion. A tentative structural identification for each HPLC effluent compound can usually be determined from the masses and fragmentation patterns of each HPLC peak. With a tentative identification in hand, determination of a positive identification by use of reference compounds or by computer searching o f MS fragmentation pattern libraries is much simpler.