Department of Materials Science, MSU-BIT University, Shenzhen, 517182, China.
LECO Corporation, 3000 Lakeview Avenue, St. Joseph, MI, USA.
Anal Bioanal Chem. 2024 Sep;416(22):4987-4997. doi: 10.1007/s00216-024-05436-0. Epub 2024 Jul 13.
Modern gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) allows for the analysis of complex samples, such as fragrances. However, identifying all the constituents in natural fragrance mixtures, especially allergens that need to be listed on product labels, is a significant challenge. This is primarily due to the high complexity of the sample and the fact that electron ionization, the most commonly used ionization method in GC-MS, produces numerous nonspecific fragment ions, often resulting in the absence or very low abundance of the molecular ion. These factors affect confidence in assigning the analyte. In this study, we demonstrate that the combination of GC × GC separation, with high mass resolution and accurate mass measurements, as well as chemical ionization in addition to traditional electron ionization, becomes an efficient tool for reliable qualitative analysis of a mixture containing 100 fragrance allergens, even when many of them are closely related species or isomers. The proposed approach expands the applicability of the comprehensive GC × GC-HRMS method, which includes complementary ionization techniques, from studies on anthropogenic priority pollutants and emerging contaminants to the analysis of natural products. Although targeted qualitative and quantitative analysis of allergens in the modern laboratories is well organized, GC × GC-HRMS, being a useful complement to routine quality control of volatile allergens in fragrances, definitely gives an additional contribution to the analytical cases when conventional 1D-GC-MS faces some problems or uncertainties.
现代气相色谱-质谱联用仪（GC-MS）可用于分析复杂样品，如香水。然而，识别天然香料混合物中的所有成分，特别是需要在产品标签上列出的过敏原，是一个重大挑战。这主要是由于样品的高度复杂性以及电子电离（GC-MS 中最常用的电离方法）产生大量非特异性碎片离子的事实，这通常导致分子离子的缺失或非常低的丰度。这些因素影响对分析物进行赋值的可信度。在这项研究中，我们证明了 GC×GC 分离与高质量分辨率和精确质量测量相结合，以及除传统电子电离之外的化学电离，成为可靠定性分析包含 100 种香料过敏原混合物的有效工具，即使其中许多是密切相关的物质或异构体。所提出的方法扩展了综合 GC×GC-HRMS 方法的适用性，该方法包括补充电离技术，从对人为优先污染物和新兴污染物的研究扩展到对天然产物的分析。尽管现代实验室中对过敏原的靶向定性和定量分析已经组织得很好，但 GC×GC-HRMS 作为对香料中挥发性过敏原常规质量控制的有益补充，在常规 1D-GC-MS 面临一些问题或不确定性的情况下，无疑为分析案例提供了额外的贡献。
