• Mass Spectrometry Letters
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.95-105
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• 2022

Amatoxin-induced mushroom poisoning starts with nonspecific symptoms of toxicity but hepatic damage may follow, resulting in the rapid development of liver insufficiency and, ultimately, coma and death. Accurate detection of amatoxins, such as α-, β-, and γ-amanitin, within the first few hours after presentation is necessary to improve the therapeutic outcomes of patients. Therefore, analytical methods for the identification and quantification of α-, β-, and γ-amanitin in biological samples are necessary for clinical and forensic toxicology. This study presents a literature review of the analytical techniques available for amatoxin detection in biological matrices, and established an inventory of liquid chromatography (LC) techniques with mass spectrometry (MS), ultraviolet (UV) detection, and electrochemical detection (ECD). LC-MS methods using quadrupole tandem mass spectrometry, time-of-flight mass spectrometry, and orbitrap MS are powerful analytical techniques for the identification and determination of amatoxins in plasma, urine, serum, and tissue samples, with high sensitivity, specificity, and reproducibility compared to LC with UV and ECD, enzyme-linked immunoassay, and capillary electrophoresis methods.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.15 no.12
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• pp.1134-1136
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• 1994

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.33 no.10
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• pp.3233-3240
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• 2012

We demonstrated the combined applications of online protein digestion using trypsin immobilized enzyme reactor (IMER) and dual tandem mass spectrometry with collisionally activated dissociation (CAD) and electron transfer dissociation (ETD) for tryptic peptides eluted through the trypsin-IMER. For the trypsin-IMER, the organic and inorganic hybrid monolithic material was used. By employing the trypsin-IMER, the long digestion time could be saved with little or no sacrifice of the digestion efficiency, which was demonstrated for standard protein samples. For three model proteins (cytochrome c, carbonic anhydrase, and bovine serum albumin), the tryptic peptides digested by the IMER were analyzed using LC-MS/MS with the dual application of CAD and ETD. As previously shown by others, the dual application of CAD and ETD increased the sequence coverage in comparison with CAD application only. In particular, ETD was very useful for the analysis of highly-protontated peptide cations, e.g., ${\geq}3+$. The combination approach provided the advantages of both trypsin-IMER and CAD/ETD dual tandem mass spectrometry applications, which are rapid digestion (i.e., 10 min), good digestion efficiency, online coupling of trypsin-IMER and liquid chromatography, and high sequence coverage.

• Mass Spectrometry Letters
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.90-97
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• 2017

Androgenic anabolic steroids (AASs) are synthetic derivatives of testosterone with a common structure containing cyclopentanoperhydrophenanthrene nucleus. Their use enhances the muscle building capacity and is beneficial during performance. The AASs are one of the most abused group of substances in horse doping. Liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry ($LC/MS^n$) has been successfully applied to the detection of anabolic steroids in biological samples. However, the saturated hydroxysteroids viz: nandrolone, $5{\alpha}-estrane-3{\beta}$, $17{\alpha}-diol$ exhibit lower detection responses in electrospray ionisation (ESI) because of their poor ionisation efficiency. To overcome this limitation pre-column chemical derivatization has been introduced to enhance their detection responses in $LC-ESI-MS^n$ analysis. The aim of present study was to develop a sensitive method for identification and confirmation of nandrolone and its metabolite in horse urine incorporating pre-column derivatization using picolinic acid. The method consists of extraction of targeted steroid conjugates by solid phase extraction (SPE). The eluted steroid conjugates were hydrolysed by methanolysis and free steroids were recovered with liquid-liquid extraction. The resulting steroids were derivatized to form picolinoyl esters and identification was done using LC-ESI-MS/MS in positive ionization mode. The picolinated steroid adduct enhanced the detection levels in comparison to underivatized steroids.

• Mass Spectrometry Letters
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.69-72
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• 2011

Defective synthesis of the steroid hormones by the adrenal cortex has profound effects on human development and homeostasis. Due to the time-consuming chromatography procedure combined with mass spectrometry, the matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization method coupled to the linear ion-trap tandem mass spectrometry (MALDI-LTQ-MS/MS) was developed for quantitative analysis of 10 adrenal steroids in human serum. Although MALDI-MS can be introduced for its applicability as a high-throughput screening method, it has a limitation on reproducibility within and between samples, which renders poor reproducibility for quantification. For quantitative MALDI-MS/MS analysis, the stable-isotope labeled internal standards were used and the conditions of crystallization were tested. The precision and accuracy were 3.1~35.5% and 83.8~138.5%, respectively, when a mixture of 10 mg/mL ${\alpha}$-cyano-4-hydroxycinnamic acid in 0.2% TFA of 70% acetonitrile was used as the MALDI matrix. The limit of quantification ranged from 5 to 340 ng/mL, and the linearity as a correlation coefficient was higher than 0.988 for all analytes in the calibration range. Clinical applications include quantitative analyses of patients with congenital adrenal hyperplasia. The devised MALDI-MS/MS technique could be successfully applied to diagnosis of clinical samples.

• Mass Spectrometry Letters
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.1-9
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• 2013

Fungal biotechnology has been well established in food and healthcare sector, and now being explored for lignocellulosic biorefinery due to their great potential to produce a wide array of extracellular enzymes for nutrient recycling. Due to global warming, environmental pollution, green house gases emission and depleting fossil fuel, fungal enzymes for lignocellulosic biomass refinery become a major focus for utilizing renewal bioresources. Proteomic technologies tender better biological understanding and exposition of cellular mechanism of cell or microbes under particular physiological condition and are very useful in characterizing fungal secretome. Hence, in addition to traditional colorimetric enzyme assay, mass-spectrometry-based quantification methods for profiling lignocellulolytic enzymes have gained increasing popularity over the past five years. Majority of these methods include two dimensional gel electrophoresis coupled to mass spectrometry, differential stable isotope labeling and label free quantitation. Therefore, in this review, we reviewed more commonly used different proteomic techniques for profiling fungal secretome with a major focus on two dimensional gel electrophoresis, liquid chromatography-based quantitative mass spectrometry for global protein identification and quantification. We also discussed weaknesses and strengths of these methodologies for comprehensive identification and quantification of extracellular proteome.

• Mass Spectrometry Letters
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.86-90
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• 2018

Methallylescaline, 2-(3,5-dimethoxy-4-[(2-methylprop-2-en-1-yl)oxy]phenyl)ethanamine, is a new psychoactive substance with potent agonist of 5-HT receptor, but there is little information on its pharmacological effect, metabolism, and toxicity. It is necessary to characterize the metabolic profiling of methallylescaline in human hepatocytes using liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry. Methallylescaline was metabolized to three hydroxy-methallylescaline (M1-M3) and dihydroxy-methallylescaline (M4) via hydroxylation in human hepatocytes. CYP2D6, CYP2J2, CYP1A2, and CYP3A4 enzymes were responsible for the metabolism of methallylescaline. The metabolites as well as methallylescaline would be used for monitoring the abuse of methallylescaline.

• Mass Spectrometry Letters
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.96-101
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• 2016

To determine the influence of the cationization agent on the collision activated dissociation (CAD) fragmentation behavior of oligosaccharides, the CAD spectra of the singly protonated, sodiated oligosaccharides and singly sodiated and dibenzo-18-crown-6 ether conjugated oligosaccharides were carefully compared. Each of these three different species showed quite different fragmentation spectra. The comparison of singly protonated and sodiated oligosaccharide CAD spectra revealed that different cationization agents affected the cationization agent adduction sites as well as the fragmentation sites within the oligosaccharides. When the mobility of $Na^+$ was limited by the dibenzo-18-crown-6 ether encapsulation agent, the examined linear oligosaccharides showed fragmentation patterns quite different from the unmodified ones. For the dibenzo-18-crown-6 ether conjugated oligosaccharides, the charge-remote fragmentation pathways were more likely to be activated than the chargedirected pathways. This work demonstrates that dibenzo-18-crown-6 ether conjugation can potentially provide a route to selectively activate the charge-remote fragmentation pathways, albeit to a limited extent, in tandem mass spectrometry studies.

• BMB Reports
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• v.53 no.7
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• pp.349-356
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• 2020

Mass spectrometry (MS) is an ideal tool for analyzing multiple types of (bio)molecular information simultaneously in complex biological systems. In addition, MS provides structural information on targets, and can easily discriminate between true analytes and background. Therefore, imaging mass spectrometry (IMS) enables not only visualization of tissues to give positional information on targets but also allows for molecular analysis of targets by affording the molecular weights. Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization-time of flight (MALDI-TOF) MS is particularly effective and is generally used for IMS. However, the requirement for an organic matrix raises several limitations that get in the way of accurate and reliable images and hampers imaging of small molecules such as drugs and their metabolites. To overcome these problems, various organic matrix-free LDI IMS systems have been developed, mostly utilizing nanostructured surfaces and inorganic nanoparticles as an alternative to the organic matrix. This minireview highlights and focuses on the progress in organic matrix-free LDI IMS and briefly discusses the use of other IMS techniques such as desorption electrospray ionization, laser ablation electrospray ionization, and secondary ion mass spectrometry.

• Mass Spectrometry Letters
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.37-40
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• 2011

Saccharin is a commonly used artificial sweetener in foodstuffs. However, for its carcinogenic dispute, it has been regulated by government bodies. In this study, isotope dilution mass spectrometry (ID-MS) was introduced for the accurate quantification of saccharin. To employ ID-LC/MS, we obtained its isotope analogue, $^{13}C_1$-sodium saccharin, by customized synthesis. Samples were spiked with $^{13}C_1$-sodium saccharin and analyzed with LC/MS in negative mode. Chromatographic conditions were optimized for the adequate chromatographic retention and separation of saccharin with a $C_{18}$ column. MS was operated with electrospray ionization by the selected ion monitoring (SIM) mode of $[M-H]^-$ for saccharin (m/z 182) and $[M-Na]^-$ for its isotope analogue (m/z 183). To validate the ID-LC/MS method for accurate measurement, we prepared a batch of a candidate material by sortifying quasi-tea-drinks with saccharin and analyzed samples gravimetrically fortified in various levels of concentration. The repeatability and reproducibility of this method was tested by analyzing the reference material. Result show that ID-LC/MS is a reliable method for the quantitative analysis of saccharin.