[Rapid screening and confirmation of 20 mycotoxins in grain products by ultrahigh performance liquid chromatography- quadrupole/electrostatic field orbitrap high- resolution mass spectrometry].

A rapid method based on ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography-quadrupole/electrostatic field orbitrap high-resolution mass spectrometry (UPLC-HRMS) was developed for the screening and confirmation of 20 mycotoxins in grain products. The samples were extracted with acetonitrile containing 2% (v/v) formic acid, and the extracts were cleaned up on Captive EMR-Lipid columns. The analytes were separated on a Thermo Hypersil Gold C18 column (100 mm×2.1 mm, 1.9 µm), and analyzed by UPLC-HRMS. The retention time and accurate mass of the parent ion were used for fast screening in full scan mode, while the accurate masses of the fragment ions were used for confirmation in the two-stage threshold-triggered full mass scan mode. The results revealed that the 20 mycotoxins showed good linear relationships in their respective mass concentration ranges. The correlation coefficients were not less than 0.99, and the limits of quantitation (LOQs) ranged from 0.25 to 20 µg/kg. The recoveries of the 20 mycotoxins in the sample ranged from 72.9% to 117.8% with the relative standard deviations (RSDs) from 2.9% to 15.2% at three spiked levels (n=6). This method has the advantages of high sensitivity and reliability, and is thus suitable for the rapid screening and confirmation of 20 mycotoxins in grain products.

[Simultaneous determination of 7 arsenic species in chicken muscle and chicken liver with high performance liquid chromatography-inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry].

A method for the simultaneous determination of 7 arsenic species was developed with high performance liquid chromatography and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (HPLC-ICP-MS). The sample was extracted with artificial gastric juice. The HPLC separation was performed on an anion analytical column utilizing a gradient elution program of ammonium carbonate and water as the mobile phase. Identification and quantification were achieved by ICP-MS. Good linearities of 7 arsenic species were observed in the range from 1 microg/kg to 50 microg/kg with the correlation coefficients greater than 0.999. The average recoveries of 7 arsenic species spiked at the three levels of 1, 2 and 10 microg/kg ranged from 84.3% to 106.6% with the relative standard deviations of 1.4%-4.2%. The quantification limits of 7 arsenic species were 1 microg/kg. The method was proved to be good reproducibility, high sensitivity and simple preprocessing. This method is suitable for the simultaneous determination of 7 arsenic species in chicken muscle and chicken liver.

beta-Actin is a useful internal control for tissue-specific gene expression studies using quantitative real-time PCR in the half-smooth tongue sole Cynoglossus semilaevis challenged with LPS or Vibrio anguillarum.

beta-Actin has been frequently used as an internal control (gene) or as a housekeeping gene to normalize the expression of the target gene(s) or mRNA levels between different samples. However, the beta-actin expression has been shown to be influenced by the sample type and experimental conditions. If beta-actin could be used as a reference gene for the half-smooth tongue sole Cynoglossus semilaevis remains ill-defined. Here we evaluate the tissue-specific beta-actin gene expression pattern in C. semilaevis when challenged with antigenic agents namely, lipopolysaccharide (LPS) or Vibrio anguillarum employing absolute quantitative real-time PCR. The real-time PCR was performed based on the standard curve generated from recombinant plasmids. No significant differences in beta-actin expression were found between treated and untreated tissue samples. We thus conclude that beta-actin could be used as a reliable internal reference gene for real-time PCR based quantitation of gene expression studies in various tissue samples of C. semilaevis challenged with LPS or pathogenic bacteria.