Endocrinology & Metabolism

Acetylation: A timekeeper of glucocorticoid sensitivity

Cortisol, also commonly known as the stress hormone, belongs to the family of glucocorticoids. In addition to its physiological function, synthetic derivatives of cortisol are also used as anti-inflammatory drugs. In the ...

Addiction

RaDPi-U: Fast and convenient drug screening with urine samples

Drugs, both legal and illegal, cause millions of cases of severe intoxication every year, leading to health complications and even fatalities. Often, they are also implicated in violent and sexual harassment crimes, as well ...

Mass spectrometry

Mass spectrometry (MS) is an analytical technique for the determination of the elemental composition of a sample or molecule. It is also used for elucidating the chemical structures of molecules, such as peptides and other chemical compounds. The MS principle consists of ionizing chemical compounds to generate charged molecules or molecule fragments and measurement of their mass-to-charge ratios. In a typical MS procedure:

MS instruments consist of three modules: an ion source, which can convert gas phase sample molecules into ions (or, in the case of electrospray ionization, move ions that exist in solution into the gas phase); a mass analyzer, which sorts the ions by their masses by applying electromagnetic fields; and a detector, which measures the value of an indicator quantity and thus provides data for calculating the abundances of each ion present. The technique has both qualitative and quantitative uses. These include identifying unknown compounds, determining the isotopic composition of elements in a molecule, and determining the structure of a compound by observing its fragmentation. Other uses include quantifying the amount of a compound in a sample or studying the fundamentals of gas phase ion chemistry (the chemistry of ions and neutrals in a vacuum). MS is now in very common use in analytical laboratories that study physical, chemical, or biological properties of a great variety of compounds.

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