Well what a week and what a great final day!
Bernie Crimmins kicked us off discussing some very interesting work using GCxGC-TOF to identify contaminants in Great Lakes’ fish. What a challenging matrix that is. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that ground whole fish could be a bit of a challenge! That has created a definite need for advanced data processing strategies. An estimated 4.8 years per student to process the data yikes! We can’t wait to see how you use ChromaTOF Tile; what will you do with all that free time? Seriously, we love that labeling system that is using the molecular weight and retention time of the unknowns. Very enjoyable presentation.
Did anyone else have trouble keeping up with Alina Muscalu’s content? There was so much valuable info presented there (and not too much!)… SCCP’s, pesticides, PCB, OC, CB and so many others! All analyzed by GCxGC, and let’s not even mention the scope of the samples and sample preparation: soils, sludge, water, significant environmental impact. Then there is the hand soap contamination in the lab. You have to watch this one!
Nathan Doddard shared research on non-targeted GCxGC-TOF analyses to assess bioaccumulation of environmental contaminants in Bottlenose Dolphins and California Sea Lions. Great presentation on sampling techniques, GCxGC-TOF analysis, and data reduction and processing strategies to make the most of this extremely rich data set. It was very encouraging to see that 94% of tentative identifications based on NIST library matches in one of his reported studies were correct upon verification. I think this is a testimony to GCxGC’s ability to provide clean, quality spectra to be searched. Very interesting work indeed.
LECO’s own Slava Artaev, Todd Richards, and Dave Alonso rounded out the content with some great examples of LECO’s technology.
All that in one day, plus a final round table discussion and I think I’d call that a great week. I think well all sleep well tonight!
