Determination of furfurals in Manuka honey using piston-cylinder liquid-liquid extraction and gas chromatography.

A rapid analytical approach for the direct measurement of furfurals such as 2-furfural and 5-methyl-2-furfural at parts-per-billion level in Manuka honey is described. The approach employs a piston-cylinder based liquid-liquid extraction device using chloroform extraction solvent. This device substantially reduces extraction time by a factor of 120 times compared to solid phase micro-extraction and reduces solvent consumption by a factor of 25 times compared to liquid-liquid extraction with mechanical agitation. A recently commercialised capillary column offering a high degree of inertness permits separation and detection of the analytes at ultra-trace level without derivatisation. A three-port planar microfluidic device with a mid-point pressure is also incorporated to back-flush heavier compounds in the matrix to improve column longevity and overall system cleanliness. With this approach, analysis is conducted in less than 7min. Repeatability of retention times for all compounds is less than 0.1% (n=20). The compounds cited can be analysed over a range from 1ng/g to 10µg/g in honey with a 5ng/g limit of quantification (LOQ) and correlation coefficients of at least 0.999. Relative precision is less than 2.8% RSD (n=20) at 50ng/g level with analyte extraction efficiency of greater than 99% (n=3) over a range from 5ng/g to 10µg/g in the matrix described. The analytical system requires only minimal maintenance and is suitable for remote site deployment. Under the analytical conditions established and with a practical LOQ of 5ng/g, 100 samples can be analysed before septum/liner/o-ring replacements are needed. As a preventive measure, the pre-column can be replaced once every six months to maintain chromatographic fidelity.

A versatile chondrogenic rat calvaria cell line R-tTA-24 that permits tetracycline-regulated gene expression.

The clonal rat calvaria cell line RCJ3.1C5.18 (RCJ) undergoes chondrogenic differentiation after long-term culture post confluence. To allow flexible genetic manipulation, a tetracycline-regulated gene expression system was established in this cell line. Treatment with tetracycline in operational doses does not affect the differentiation of RCJ cells with respect to the markers tested. After stable transfection with pUHD15.1 containing the tetracycline transactivator (tTA) in the presence of pTK-hyg for hygromycin selection, 28 clones were isolated and characterized for alcian blue staining of cartilage-specific proteoglycans and for collagen type II expression. Clone R-tTA-24 was selected on the basis of phenotype and displayed tetracycline-dependent down-regulation of luciferase activity (tet-OFF system) by two orders of magnitude (57-149-fold) after stable transfection with the reporter gene pBI-EGFP/luc. The novel, chondrogenic cell line R-tTA-24 may be stably transfected with various genes of interest for tetracycline-regulated gene expression using neomycin selection and may be a valuable tool to study the process of chondrogenic differentiation in vitro.