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Push-through Direction Injectin NMR Automation
Citation:
Teng, Q., D. Ekman, AND Tim Collette. Push-through Direction Injectin NMR Automation. Presented at 8th Annual International Meeting of the Metabolomics Society, Washington, DC, June 25 - 28, 2012.
Impact/Purpose:
Presentation for 8th Annual International Meeting of the Metabolomics Society.
Description:
Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and mass spectrometry (MS) are the two major spectroscopic techniques successfully used in metabolomics studies. The non-invasive, quantitative and reproducible characteristics make NMR spectroscopy an excellent technique for detection of endogenous metabolites and associated metabolic changes upon exposure to stressors. However, unlike MS, NMR spectroscopy has not been highly automated. In recent years, there has been a greater demand to improve the throughput of NMR analysis partly due to the large number of samples requiring analysis for metabolomics research. Direct injection (DI) NMR (or flow NMR) automation has been recognized to have the potential to increase throughput because of its 96-well plate format. However, DI NMR analysis has not been widely used because of such unsolved technical challenges as sample carryover (cross contamination), sample diffusion at the front end of the sample, transfer line blockage, and air bubbles trapped in the flow cell. Several variants of DI NMR methods have been proposed to address one or more of the issues, but not all together. We have developed a push-through (PT) DI NMR method that overcomes all the above-mentioned problems with the conventional DI NMR automation methods. This new technique simultaneously eliminates sample carryover and diffusion, and is free of air bubbles in the flow cell. Also, samples can be kept at low temperature when queuing and retrieved at the end of the NMR experiments. During the automation of thousands of samples, the new PT DI NMR technique has proven to be reliable, efficient and free of carryover contamination and sample diffusion.
