Category Archives: chromatography

Nominations sought for the Dal Nogare Award in Chromatography

The Stephen Dal Nogare award is one of the oldest and most prestigious awards given in chromatography. Since 1972, it has been presented by the Chromatography Forum of the Delaware Valley – usually at PITTCON.

The award was established in memory of Dr. Stephen Dal Nogare – a DuPont Company chemist who made several contributions to chromatographic science.

The Chromatography Forum of the Delaware Valley has begun seeking nominations for the 2011 Dal Nogare Award. The award is given each year to an individual who is an example of an outstanding scientist in the field of chromatography. The awardee is selected on the basis of their contributions to the fundamental understanding of the chromatographic process.

Nominations, including one hard copy and one electronic copy, should include current resume and publication examples as well as any seconding letters. These should be submitted by 15 January 2010 to:

Dal Nogare Award Committee
c/o Dr Mary Ellen P. McNally
E. I. DuPont deNemours and Co., Inc.
Crop Protection Products
Stine Haskell Research Center
S315/2224
1090 Elkton Road
Newark, Delaware 19711-3507
USA.

Click Here to see photos of a visit by Dr. Stephen Dal Nogare’s son to Analtech.

Former Dal Nogare award winners include L.B. (Buck) Rogers (1972), Stuart P. Cram (1973), J. J. Kirkland (1974), Barry L. Karger (1975), Lloyd R. Snyder (1976), Georges Guiochen (1977), Csaba G. Horvath (1978), J. Calvin Giddings (1979), Evan C. Horning (1980), Joseph H.K. Huber (1981), Marcel J.E. Golay (1982), John H. Knox (1983), Hamish Small (1984), John Lovelok (1985), Gerhart Schomburg (1986), Fred Regnier (1987), Harold Walton (1988), Phyllis R. Brown (1989), Robert L. Grob (1990), James S. Fritz (1991), Heinz Engelhardt (1992), Jacques Rijks (1993), Pat Sandra (1994), Charles W. Gehrke (1995), Peter W. Carr (1996), Daniel Martire (1997), James W. Jorgenson (1998), Milton L. Lee (1999), William F. Pirkle (2000), Harold M. McNair (2001), Walter D. Jennings (2002), W.S. Hancock (2003), Milos V. Novotny (2004), Daniel W. Armstrong (2005), Victoria L. McGuffin (2006), John W. Dolan (2007), John G. Dorsey (2008) and Frantisek Svec (2009).

Thin Layer Chromatography used to weed out counterfeit medication

We’ve posted on this subject before, but wanted to offer more on the subject from our friends at Australia’s On Line Opinion, where Roger Bate has written about tools to fight fake drugs:

Poor quality medicines are pervasive across Africa. The WHO reports that more than 30 per cent of medicines on sale in many African countries are counterfeit, with some pills containing nothing more than chalk or water.

The German Pharma Health Fund’s “Minilab” uses thin layer chromatography, disintegration and simple dye tests to help weed out the worst-quality products. Generally, a product will “pass” the Minilab test if it contains 80 per cent or more of the labelled active ingredient.

Click Here to read the entire piece.

Doing Thin Layer Chromatography at home

Sean Michael Ragan at Makezine.com recently posted a great post about Thin Layer Chromatography in the kitchen – here’s some excerpts:

During my six-odd years as a graduate organic chemist, probably the cheapest, most powerful, and most commonly used analytical laboratory technique in my bag of tricks was thin-layer chromatography…

[another] common reason for performing separations is analytical: You want to get an idea of how many compounds are in there and whether or not one of them is compound “X.” Thin-layer chromatography lets you do this, on a bench-top, with a few cents worth of materials and a few minutes of time. It’s unbelievably powerful for such an inexpensive technique.

Click here to read the complete post.

Celebrating the birth of the father of Chromatography

Mikhail Semyonovich Tsvet was born on this day in 1872. Tsvet

Here’s an excerpt from Discoveries in Medicine about the significance of Tsvet’s work:

The first chromatograph was invented by Russian botanist Mikhail Semenovich Tsvett (1872-1919). While working in Poland, Tsvett was looking for a method of separating a mixture of plant pigments (tints) which are chemically very similar to each other. To isolate different types of chlorophyll, he trickled a mixture of dissolved pigments through a glass tube packed with calcium carbonate powder. As the solution washed downward, each pigment stuck to the powder with a different degree of strength, creating a series of colored bands. Each band of color represented a different substance. Tsvett referred to the colored bands as a chromatogram. He also suggested that the technique (now called adsorption chromatography) could be used to separate colorless substances.

Although Tsvett published a report of his work in the early 1900s, chemists paid very little attention to it. There were a few reasons for ignoring the work. First, the report was written in Russian, which few Western chemists of the time read. Second, the technique may have seemed too simple to chemists who were used to relying on lengthy extraction, crystallization, or distillation processes to separate mixtures. Within a few years, Tsvett’s technique was rediscovered. The rediscovery was by the German organic chemist Richard Martin Willstatter (1872-1942), who was also studying chlorophyll. By introducing chromatography to Western European scientists, Willstatter helped establish one of the most versatile analytical techniques known to chemistry.

Join us today as we honor the work of Mikhail Semyonovich Tsvet

Information Directory on Thin Layer Chromatography

Adiwebs.com is an online information directory. It provides useful information on a variety of topics. Thin Layer Chromatography

The site has a great write up on Thin Layer Chromatography – here’s some excerpts:

Thin layer chromatography is adsorption chromatography performed on open layers of adsorbent materials supported bon glass plates. This technique combines many of the advantages of paper chromatography with those of column chromatography.

…

Superiority of TLC:

The superiority of TLC over paper chromatography lies in the following facts:

Because of the inorganic nature of the adsorbent (supporting medium), concentrated sulfuric acid spray followed by heating may be used to develop (or locate substances on) the chromatogram by charring and rendering visible any spots of organic nature.
Moreover, amino acid mixtures, which require 18 hours for separation on paper, require as little as 3 hours using cellulose TLC.
The advantage of this technique also lies in the choice of the adsorbents which allow separation not possible on paper.

Click Here to read more from Adiwebs.com

Thin Layer Chromatography and Skin Care

One of the regular questions we get is, “where is Thin Layer Chromatography used?” To which we respond, pretty much everywhere.

For one example you probably wouldn’t expect, check out Fresh Faced Skin by clicking here.

What are some examples you’ve seen of Thin Layer Chromatography applications?

Monty Python and Thin Layer Chromatography – the “I’m Not Dead Yet” chemical

Chemical & Engineering News just published a fascinating Ants piece about how ants let other ants know whether they are dead or not.

Of course, the whole piece starts off with a reference to Monty Python’s great “I’m not dead yet” scene from the Holy Grail. It’s good to see yet another connection between Monty Python and Chromatography!

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

By using thin-layer chromatography and gas chromatography to compare live, just-killed, and dead ants, the team showed that a subset of chemicals disappeared from the ants’ outer covering within one hour of death. From those extracts they identified two rapidly dissipating “do not discard” signaling chemicals—specific isomers of the natural products dolichodial and iridomyrmecin.

Click Here to read more and view the video.

First COLOR HPLC Column sold in the world!

We have just sold our first COLOR HPLC Column!

Yes, that’s right – it’s an Orange Ion Exchange DEAE-Column 5 um particle size, 100Å pore size, 150 mm long with a 4.6 mm Inner Diameter.

The new COLOR HPLC Columns are being offered with a wide variety of sizes and packings, from C8 and C18 silica to methyl, ethyl, butyl, phenyl, and triacontyl.

Think about it – no more standing around with a bunch of columns that look exactly alike wondering, “which one of these is the C18 and which one is the C8?”

To check out all of those varieties and colors, click here.

Thin Layer Chromatography used in DNA aging research

Excerpts from a paper posted on the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health web site DNA strands titled:

TLC-based detection of methylated cytosine: application to aging epigenetics

5-Methylcytosine (m(5)C) has a plethora of functions and roles in various biological processes including human diseases and aging. A TLC-based fast and simple method for quantitative determination of total genomic levels of m(5)C in DNA is described, which can be applicable to aging research with respect to rapid and high throughput screening and comparison. Using this method, an example of the analysis of global alternations of m(5)C in serially passaged human skin fibroblasts is provided, which shows age-related global hypomethylation during cellular aging in vitro.

Click Here to access the paper.

Training the next generation in Biotechnology

St. Georges Technical High School has a stellar St. Georges Biotech Open House Biotechnology Program and the program’s director, Florence Malinowski, M.S., is happy to share what her students are learning.

St. Georges students demonstrate Elisa Lab At the programs’ first Open House, students demonstrated a wide variety of lab techniques – from DNA extraction to Gel Electrophoresis to Chromatography.

The following are excerpts from an article by Edward L. Kenney about the open house published by the News Journal:

Students, mostly juniors who are looking for summer internships and cooperative employment opportunities, showed off their skills at eight lab stations as employers took the opportunity to talk with them about what they were doing.
Student demonstrates chromatography at St. Georges High School
Junior Gina Peirce, 17, worked with a mortar and pestle, crushing spinach leaves and removing the juice for analysis.

“We’re finding out different pigments that are in spinach,” said Gina, who does not know yet what career she would like to pursue. “A lot of people came to this station and asked about this. It’s a really good opportunity for companies to see what we’re doing here at St. Georges.”

The first class will graduate next year, so many of the students also are looking at higher education. Among the college representatives at the open house was Joan Barber, the chairwoman for the biology and chemistry department at Delaware Technical & Community College’s Stanton Campus, which offers associate degree programs in biotechnology and chemistry technology.

“These students would be wonderful for our program,” she said. “They would be very well prepared. They’ve had a lot of introduction to things that we would be teaching them at DelTech.”

Below are a series of comments from some who attended the Open House: