Posted by This paper presents developments in chiral stationary phase coatings for microelectromechanical system gas chromatography (MEMS GC). Three commercial columns coated with chiral stationary phases from Restek were tested: Rt-βDEXm (permethylated beta cyclodextrin), Rt-βDEXsm (2,3-di-O-methyl-6-O-tert-butyl dimethylsilyl beta cyclodextrin), and Rt-βDEXsa (2,3-di-acetoxy-6-O-tert-butyl dimethylsilyl beta cyclodextrin) using amino acid enantiomers (D- and L-) : alanine (Ala), valine (Val), leucine (Leu), and aspartic acid (Asp). The Rt-βDEXsm column provided the best experimental performance with separation of D- and L-Ala and partial separation of D- and L-Asp.
MEMS GC is a prominent analytical tool for spaceflight missions. A complete MEMS GC system has previously presented for volatile and semivolatile analysis including coupling this MEMS GC system to the MAss Spectrometer for Planetary EXploration (MASPEX), a spaceflight MS. In this current work, the first experiments of coating MEMS GC separation columns with a chiral stationary phase are demonstrated to attain a goal of separating amino acid enantiomers for elucidation of enantiomeric ratios and determination of enantiomeric excesses. On Earth, most biological material prefers the L-enantiomer for amino acids (D/L ~ 0.02) and D-enantiomers for carbohydrates. The near unanimous preference for one enantiomeric form has been termed biological chirality, or homochirality, and has been viewed as a fundamental condition for the existence of life. For this reason, detecting large enantiomeric excesses in amino acids would indicate strong evidence for biology.
RYAN C. BLASE , MARK J. LIBARDONI, CHRISTOPHER R. GLEIN, KELLY E. MILLER, J. HUNTER WAITE, MAXWELL WEI-HAO LI, KATSUO KURABAYASHI AND XUDONG FAN (2024) Biosignature Detection from Amino Acid Enantiomers with Portable Gas Chromatography Systems. ADVANCED DEVICES & INSTRUMENTATION 5, 0049. https://doi.org/10.34133/adi.0049