by Brian Musselman, DART Technical Advisor, Bruker Applied Markets
In many instances, scientific advancement and analytical utility rely on characterizing a sample in its native state. This is especially true when it comes to the identification and investigation of animal products and plant materials, which ideally call for the detection of chemical compounds at trace levels in bugs, leaves, feathers, bark, soil, or any number of other complex matrices. A defining characteristic of these complex matrices is that they are far from pristine, typically incorporating a diverse array of compounds other than the analyte of interest. Applying techniques such as GC-MS to such samples can be useful, but the associated sample preparation is a limiting factor with respect to throughput that can simultaneously erode the relevance of the resulting data, especially with respect to the identification of easily fragmented molecules.
Read more on Labcompare.