Glass capillary columns and their significance in biochemical research

Development of capillary liquid chromatography: A personal perspective

“…During my first years as a “chromatography apprentice” in Brno, I was fascinated by capillary GC resolving dozens and even hundreds of components from a complex sample, albeit only for petroleum hydrocarbons, or at best, mixtures of fatty acid methyl esters. Thanks to glass capillary column technologies, a few years later, we could also analyze steroids, sugars and some other biochemical compounds converted to volatile derivatives [14], but what about all the large and nonvolatile substances that one would surely encounter in a complex biological sample? It may not be widely appreciated today that the concept of “metabolic profiling”, a term introduced by Dalgliesh et al in 1966 [15], long preceded what is now called “metabolomics”.…”

“…While using one particular measurement method, such as GC or GC-MS, the whole series of metabolically related substances could be at once displayed qualitatively and quantitatively in a single chromatographic run. For example, it became feasible to profile most metabolites of the steroid hormones extracted from a physiological fluid sample and quantitatively evaluate them [14,16] under different conditions of health or disease.…”

“…1 (A), featuring a concentrate of urinary volatile compounds as an example. Comparable efficiencies could also be obtained for the multicomponent separations of steroids, urinary acidic metabolites and polyols, all seemingly polar compounds, paving the way to metabolic profiling with the applications to human genetic disorders and metabolic abnormalities of human diseases [reviewed in ref 14 and 16 ]. In contrast, Fig.…”

Biochemical individuality reflected in chromatographic, electrophoretic and mass-spectrometric profiles

“…Most biochemical applications of GC throughout the 1970s reflect these goals: development of capillary GC for biochemical measurements [16][17][18][19][20][21]; a coincidental availability of its combination with mass spectrometry (GC-MS) for important metabolite identifications; and, the overall improvements in the reliability of capillary GC as a sample profiling technique in terms of sampling and instrumentation [21]. Most of these issues appear paralleled in a later development of metabolomic approaches based on NMR spectrometry [22,23], an inherently quantitative technique, which also provides structural identification, yet on the basis of different physical principles.…”

Introduction to Gas Chromatography/High Resolution Mass Spectrometry

“…As with any successful technique, many improvements have been incorporated in recent years in order to provide the maximum amount of information that can be derived from a GC/MS analysis. Significant developments include the use of: a) glass capillary columns (1)(2)(3), for minimized surface effects and increased chromatographic resolution; b) direct interfacing of capillary columns to the mass spectrometer ion source (4)(5)(6)(7), to reduce sample losses in a molecular separator and to preserve chromatographic resolution by elimi nating large-volume connectors; c) high pressure ionization methods (e.g., chemical ionization, [8][9][10][11][12][13][14], to provide complementary in formation to assist in the interpretation of electron impact spectra; d) improved computer techniques, for automated data acquisition, data handling (15)(16)(17), spectrum recognition (18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23) and interpretation (24)(25)(26).…”