• Analytical Science and Technology
• /
• v.33 no.1
• /
• pp.23-32
• /
• 2020

Methamphetamine (MA) is the most common and available drug of abuse in Korea and its primary metabolite is amphetamine (AP). Detection of AP derivatives, such as MA, AP, phentermine (PT), MDA, MDMA, and MDEA by the use of immunoassay screening is not reliable and accurate due to cross-reactivity and insufficient specificity/sensitivity. Therefore, the analytical process accepted by most urine drug-testing programs employs the two-step method with an initial screening test followed by a more specific confirmatory test if the specimen screens positive. In this study, a gas chromatography-mass spectrometric (GC-MS) method was developed and validated for confirmation of MA and AP in human urine. Urine sample (500 µL) was added with N-isopropylbenzylamine as internal standard and ethyl chloroformate as a derivatization reagent, and then extracted with 200 µL of ethyl acetate. Extracted samples were analysed with GC-MS in the SIM/ Scan mode, which were screened by Cobas c311 analyzer (Roche/Hitachi) to evaluate the efficiency as well as the compatibility of the GC-MS method. Qualitative method validation requirements for selectivity, limit of detection (LOD), precision, accuracy, and specificity/sensitivity were examined. These parameters were estimated on the basis of the most intense and characteristic ions in mass spectra of target compounds. Precision and accuracy were less than 5.2 % (RSD) and ±14.0 % (bias), respectively. The LODs were 3 ng/mL for MA and 1.5 ng/mL for AP. At the screening immunoassay had a sensitivity of 100% and a specificity of 95.1 % versus GC-MS for confirmatory testing. The applicability of the method was tested by the analysis of spiked urine and abusers' urine samples.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
• /
• v.49 no.3
• /
• pp.329-331
• /
• 2006

Alkaptonuria is a rare metabolic disease in which homogentisic acid cannot be metabolized due to a lack of the enzyme homogentisic acid oxidase. The disease often manifests itself in childhood by darkening of the urine upon standing. The disease leads to such serious consequences as ochronosis of cartilage and connective tissues with arthritis. It is expected that treatment with ascorbic acid and a dietary restriction of protein may decrease the late and serious consequences by diminishing the serum concentration of the metabolite benzoquinone acetic acid. A thirteen month-old girl was recently diagnosed with alkaptonuria by urine organic acid analysis. She excreted pinkish urine on a diaper and as time went by the urine color changed to a light brown. In laboratory findings, urine examination and culture results were normal. But urine organic acid analysis detected abnormal findings a prominent and massive elevation of homogentisic acid. The other physical findings were normal. This is the first case diagnosed in Korea.

• Journal of Ginseng Research
• /
• v.42 no.1
• /
• pp.57-67
• /
• 2018

Background: Ginseng contains many small metabolites such as amino acids, fatty acids, carbohydrates, and ginsenosides. However, little is known about the relationships between microorganisms and metabolites during the entire ginseng fermentation process. We investigated metabolic changes during ginseng fermentation according to the inoculation of food-compatible microorganisms. Methods: Gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC-MS) datasets coupled with the multivariate statistical method for the purpose of latent-information extraction and sample classification were used for the evaluation of ginseng fermentation. Four different starter cultures (Saccharomyces bayanus, Bacillus subtilis, Lactobacillus plantarum, and Leuconostoc mesenteroide) were used for the ginseng extract fermentation. Results: The principal component analysis score plot and heat map showed a clear separation between ginseng extracts fermented with S. bayanus and other strains. The highest levels of fructose, maltose, and galactose in the ginseng extracts were found in ginseng extracts fermented with B. subtilis. The levels of succinic acid and malic acid in the ginseng extract fermented with S. bayanus as well as the levels of lactic acid, malonic acid, and hydroxypruvic acid in the ginseng extract fermented with lactic acid bacteria (L. plantarum and L. mesenteroide) were the highest. In the results of taste features analysis using an electronic tongue, the ginseng extracts fermented with lactic acid bacteria were significantly distinguished from other groups by a high index of sour taste probably due to high lactic acid contents. Conclusion: These results suggest that a metabolomics approach based on GC-MS can be a useful tool to understand ginseng fermentation and evaluate the fermentative characteristics of starter cultures.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural Science
• /
• v.45 no.2
• /
• pp.154-168
• /
• 2018

Salinity is a major abiotic stress that adversely affects crop productivity and quality. In this study, the metabolic profile and nutritional composition of rice in response to NaCl were analyzed. The plants were exposed to stressed or unstressed conditions, and their metabolic changes were examined in the shoots, roots, and grains collected at different growth stages. The levels of nutrients and anti-nutrients, including proximates, amino acids, fatty acids, minerals, vitamins, and phytic acid, were also determined for the grains. Application of NaCl significantly decreased the shoot and root growth and induced metabolic alterations at the tillering stage. During the heading stage, only the root metabolites were influenced by NaCl, and no metabolic variations related to salinity were found in the shoot, roots, and grains at the ripening stage. Nutritional analysis of the grain samples revealed that the amounts of linolenic acid and tricosanoic acid were significantly reduced while those of copper, sodium, and phytic acid were enhanced in response to stress. However, except for sodium, those differences were not great. Our results suggest that although NaCl-salinity influences the phenotypic and metabolic profiles of rice shoots and roots at the tillering stage, this impact becomes negligible as tissue development proceeds. This is especially true for the grains. Compositional analysis of the grains indicated that salinity induces some changes in fatty acids, minerals, and anti-nutrients.

• Journal of Digital Contents Society
• /
• v.11 no.1
• /
• pp.99-104
• /
• 2010

Numerous bio-digital contents have been produced by new technology using biochip and others for analyzing early chemical-induced genes. These contents have little meaning by themselves, and so they should be modified and extracted after consideration of biological meaning. These include genomics, transcriptomics, protenomics, metabolomics, which combined into omics. Omics tools could be applied into toxicology, forming a new field of toxicogenomics. It is possible that approach of toxicogenomics can estimate toxicity more quickly and accurately by analyzing gene/protein/metabolite profiles. These approaches should help not only to discover highly sensitive and predictive biomarkers but also to understand molecular mechanism(s) of toxicity, based on the development of analysing technology. Furthermore, it is important that bio-digital contents should be obtained from specific cells having biological events more than from whole cells. Taken together, many bio-digital contents should be analyzed by careful calculating algorism under well-designed experimental protocols, network analysis using computational algorism and related profound databases.

• Journal of Ginseng Research
• /
• v.37 no.2
• /
• pp.248-253
• /
• 2013

Leaves from Panax ginseng Meyer (Korean origin and Chinese origin of Korean ginseng) and P. quinquefolius (American ginseng) were harvested in Haenam province, Korea, and were analyzed to investigate patterns in major metabolites using HPLC-based metabolic profiling. Partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) was used to analyze the the HPLC chromatogram data. There was a clear separation between Panax species and/or origins from different countries in the PLS-DA score plots. The ginsenoside compounds of Rg1, Re, Rg2, Rb2, Rb3, and Rd in Korean leaves were higher than in Chinese and American ginseng leaves, and the Rb1 level in P. quinquefolius leaves was higher than in P. ginseng (Korean origin or Chinese origin). HPLC chromatogram data coupled with multivariate statistical analysis can be used to profile the metabolite content and undertake quality control of Panax products.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
• /
• v.34 no.8
• /
• pp.2413-2418
• /
• 2013

Forensic and legal medicine require reliable data to indicate excessive alcohol consumption. Ethanol is oxidatively metabolized to acetate by alcohol dehydrogenase and non-oxidatively metabolized to ethyl glucuronide (EtG), ethyl sulfate (EtS), phosphatidylethanol, or fatty acid ethyl esters (FAEE). Oxidative metabolism is too rapid to provide biomarkers for the detection of ethanol ingestion. However, the non-oxidative metabolite EtG is a useful biomarker because it is stable, non-volatile, water soluble, highly sensitive, and is detected in body fluid, hair, and tissues. EtG analysis methods such as mass spectroscopy, chromatography, or enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay techniques are currently in use. We suggest that nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy could be used to monitor ethanol intake. As with current conventional methods, NMR spectroscopy doesn't require complicated pretreatments or sample separation. This method has the advantages of short acquisition time, simple sample preparation, reproducibility, and accuracy. In addition, all proton-containing compounds can be detected. In this study, we performed $^1H$ NMR analyses of urine to monitor the ethanol and EtG. Urinary samples were collected over time from 5 male volunteers. We confirmed that ethanol and EtG signals could be detected with NMR spectroscopy. Ethanol signals increased immediately upon alcohol intake, but decreased sharply over time. In contrast, EtG signal increased and reached a maximum about 9 h later, after which the EtG signal decreased gradually and remained detectable after 20-25 h. Based on these results, we suggest that $^1H$ NMR spectroscopy may be used to identify ethanol non-oxidative metabolites without the need for sample pretreatment.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
• /
• v.23 no.4
• /
• pp.197-202
• /
• 2004

The persistence of pendimethalin in soil and ground water has an injurious effect on ecosystem. Pendimethalin-degrading bacterium was isolated from Masan, Gyeongnam province and temporarily identified as Bacillus sp. MS202 by the analysis of API CHB50, kit, FAME, and 16S rDNA sequence. from the analysis of pnedimethalin metabolite using TLC, GC, and GC-MS, we found that the degradation of pendimethalin by Bacillus sp. MS202 did not result in the dealkylated form, but the formation of the reduced compound, 6-amino-2-nitro-N(1-ethylpropyl)-3,4-xylidine or 2- amino-6-nitro-N(1-ethylpropyl)-3,4-xylidine.

• Korean Journal of Microbiology
• /
• v.54 no.3
• /
• pp.175-187
• /
• 2018

Myxobacteria produce diverse secondary metabolites for predation, self-defense, intercellular signaling, and other unknown functions. Many secondary metabolites isolated from myxobacteria show pharmaceutically useful bioactivity such as anticancer, antibacterial, and antifungal activities with a unique mechanism of action. Therefore, a large number of myxobacterial strains have been isolated globally and many bioactive compounds have been purified from them. However, 16S rRNA database analysis indicates that there are far more types of myxobacterial species in the wild than have ever been isolated, and genome sequence analysis suggests that each myxobacterium is capable of producing much more metabolites than already known. In this article, the current status of studies on the secondary metabolites from myxobacteria, their biosynthetic genes, biological functions, and transcriptional regulatory factors governing gene expression were reviewed.

• Safety and Health at Work
• /
• v.10 no.2
• /
• pp.196-204
• /
• 2019

Background: Liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MSMS) for simultaneous analysis of multiple microbial secondary metabolites (MSMs) is potentially subject to interference by matrix components. Methods: We examined potential matrix effects (MEs) in analyses of 31 MSMs using ultraperformance LC-MSMS. Twenty-one dust aliquots from three buildings (seven aliquots/building) were spiked with seven concentrations of each of the MSMs ($6.2pg/{\mu}l-900pg/{\mu}l$) and then extracted. Another set of 21 aliquots were first extracted and then, the extract was spiked with the same concentrations. We added deepoxy-deoxynivalenol (DOM) to all aliquots as a universal internal standard. Ten microliters of the extract was injected into the ultraperformance LC-MSMS. ME was calculated by subtracting the percentage of the response of analyte in spiked extract to that in neat standard from 100. Spiked extract results were used to create a matrix-matched calibration (MMC) curve for estimating MSM concentration in dust spiked before extraction. Results: Analysis of variance was used to examine effects of compound (MSM), building and concentration on response. MEs (range: 63.4%-99.97%) significantly differed by MSM (p < 0.01) and building (p < 0.05). Mean percent recoveries adjusted with DOM and the MMC method were 246.3% (SD = 226.0) and 86.3% (SD = 70.7), respectively. Conclusion: We found that dust MEs resulted in substantial underestimation in quantifying MSMs and that DOM was not an optimal universal internal standard for the adjustment but that the MMC method resulted in more accurate and precise recovery compared with DOM. More research on adjustment methods for dust MEs in the simultaneous analyses of multiple MSMs using LC-MSMS is warranted.