Cancer researchers in universities and R&D labs in biopharmaceutical companies study changes in protein glycosylation to identify potential biomarkers for treatment. They typically focus on differences in overall oligosaccharide (glycan) content, monosaccharide content changes, differences in sialylation amount and sialylation linkages, the degree of fucosylation, and differences in glycan branching.

Recently, one of my colleagues from the UK emailed a link to a resource that should be helpful to chromatographers, both new to chromatography and experienced in chromatography: Guide to Sample Preparation (link to registration page to order the poster; a hard copy of the poster will be mailed to you. You can also click the image and it will take you to the registration page.). You can hang this complementary poster in your lab or office for quick and handy references on how to deal with samples.

Dried distillers grains with solubles (DDGS) are the dried remains of the production of ethanol from corn by fermentation and typically is sold as a high protein livestock feed that increases efficiency and lowers the risk of subacute acidosis in beef cattle (link to Wikipedia page).

After posting a recent story on our Facebook page (link to our page) on the shortage of liquid helium and some scientists think using helium to fill party balloons is wasteful (link to story), I recalled a couple of very popular webinars we did last year on moving from helium to hydrogen as a carrier gas in gas chromatography analysis of water as per U.S. EPA methods to save on escalating helium costs for laboratories.

This is very exciting news that I am sharing with our blog readers. Our improved ion chromatography method provides a sensitive, selective, and reproducible alternative to AOAC Method 999.14 for choline determination in food samples has been awarded First Action Official Method Status by the AOAC! You can find the approval listed on the AOAC Standards and Announcements page as First Action Official Method^SM 2012.20, “Choline in Infant Formula and Adult Nutritionals by Ion Chromatography and Suppressed Conductivity”.

Continuing the discussion on the use of Process Analytical Technology (PAT) to monitor process and product attributes during the development and implementation of a manufacturing process as in fermentation and recovery in biopharma production.

Three things came together for this blog post: first, late last month, I tweeted the troubling news that the 14-year long polystyrene foam ban in China would be lifted in May of this year, then I read people in China were concerned about the pollution from polystyrene as the ban was lifted, and finally, I received this research study on chicken embryos exposed to hexabromocyclododecane (HBCD) which is is a brominated flame retardant (link to Wikipedia page) used in polystyrene foam!

This topic is a new one for this blog, and highlights the use of Process Analytical Technology (PAT) to monitor process and product attributes during the development and implementation of a manufacturing process, as in fermentation and recovery in biopharma production.

Did you know the main ways that humans ingest toxic polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) (link to Wikipedia page) is through food and by inhaling indoor air and house dust? Last year, the NIEHS released a study on PBDEs that found "toddlers have a significant amount of exposure to PBDEs through house dust." (Link to story on NIH site.)

We just released a new ion chromatography suppressor (Thermo Scientific Dionex ERS 500 Electrolytically Regenerated Suppressor) and I thought our blog readers would be interested in learning about the new features of this particular suppressor.