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Arsenolipids (AsL) of the type arsenic-containing fatty acids (AsFA) and hydrocarbons (AsHC) are known to occur in seafood and their identification is today a challenge due to the need of data for toxicological assessment. The aim of this investigation was to enhance the data concerning AsL in commercial canned cod liver. Therefore, the present study focuses on the quantification and identification of AsL by LC-ICP-MS combined with ESI-MS. The molecular structure of 17 AsL was elucidated on the basis of their exact mass and their product ion spectra and two new AsFA tentatively identified. The total arsenic concentration in four different canned cod liver analyzed by ICP-MS ranged from 2.6 to 5.5 mg As/kg with an extraction recovery of 98%. The AsL detected by RP-IPC-MS comprise 58-95% of the total arsenic content, indicating that AsL are a major class of arsenic in canned cod liver. Much of the AsL detected in the canned cod liver extracts are, however, not yet identified. Practical applications:The results obtained in the present research show the possibility to apply the current extraction and detection method in different biological samples for the determination of AsL. Additionally, this information can be used for further studies to assess the risk of AsL for consumer health. On the other hand, the MS/MS results could be used for the future identification of AsL without the ICP-MS detection and thus, low the cost of the analysis.

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Fast capillary electrophoresis (CE) hyphenated to time-of-flight mass spectrometry (TOF-MS) of four organoarsenic species (glycerol oxoarsenosugar, sulfate oxoarsenosugar, arsenobetaine, arsenocholine) are presented using short length CE capillaries under high electric field strengths of up to 1.3 kV cm À1 with small inner diameter (ID). The separation of arsenosugars by CE is demonstrated for the first time. An aqueous formic acid solution was employed as the background electrolyte (BGE) for the separation. Various acid concentrations were evaluated for their influence on migration times, separation efficiency as well as with regard to controlling the charge of the arsenic species. A 0.1 M formic acid/ammonium formate buffer (pH 2.8) proved to be suitable for the separation of the four species. A non-aqueous BGE was tested as an alternative buffer system for fast speciation analysis. Separation of arsenobetaine and arsenocholine could even be achieved within 10 s by pressure-assisted CE. Application of the optimized method for the analysis of extracts of a seagrass and a Wakame algae sample as well as the brown algae homogenate reference material IAEA-140/TM revealed a clear signal for the glycerol arsenosugar.

BackgroundCulicoides biting midges are vectors of bluetongue and Schmallenberg viruses that inflict large-scale disease epidemics in ruminant livestock in Europe. Methods based on morphological characteristics and sequencing of genetic markers are most commonly employed to differentiate Culicoides to species level. Proteomic methods, however, are also increasingly being used as an alternative method of identification. These techniques have the potential to be rapid and may also offer advantages over DNA-based techniques. The aim of this proof-of-principle study was to develop a simple MALDI-MS based method to differentiate Culicoides from different species by peptide patterns with the additional option of identifying discriminating peptides.MethodsProteins extracted from 7 Culicoides species were digested and resulting peptides purified. Peptide mass fingerprint (PMF) spectra were recorded using matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF-MS) and peak patterns analysed in R using the MALDIquant R package. Additionally, offline liquid chromatography (LC) MALDI-TOF tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) was applied to determine the identity of peptide peaks in one exemplary MALDI spectrum obtained using an unfractionated extract.ResultsWe showed that the majority of Culicoides species yielded reproducible mass spectra with peak patterns that were suitable for classification. The dendrogram obtained by MS showed tentative similarities to a dendrogram generated from cytochrome oxidase I (COX1) sequences. Using offline LC-MALDI-TOF-MS/MS we determined the identity of 28 peptide peaks observed in one MALDI spectrum in a mass range from 1.1 to 3.1 kDa. All identified peptides were identical to other dipteran species and derived from one of five highly abundant proteins due to an absence of available Culicoides data.ConclusionShotgun mass mapping by MALDI-TOF-MS has been shown to be compatible with morphological and genetic identification of specimens. Furthermore, the method performs at least as well as an alternative approach based on MS spectra of intact proteins, thus establishing the procedure as a method in its own right, with the additional option of concurrently using the same samples in other MS-based applications for protein identifications. The future availability of genomic information for different Culicoides species may enable a more stringent peptide detection based on Culicoides-specific sequence information.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1756-3305-7-392) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.