Abstract Effective recovery and high purity of lipid biomarkers are essential for compound-specific stable isotope analysis in a variety of fields ranging from hydrocarbon research, paleoclimatology, food and drug analysis and medicine. Solid-phase extraction (SPE) is the most common method for purifying organic compounds from complex mixtures. SPE constitutes the most labor-intensive part of laboratory work often limiting the number of samples that can be analyzed. Reliable, easy-to-use, automated methods could increase sample throughput as well as reproducibility. Here we introduce such a method using a Gilson ASPEC GX-271 system and test the separation quality, reproducibility, and efficiency in comparison to a classical manual SPE lipid purification procedure. Using multiple extractions of the same natural soil sample we show that the automated SPE is comparable in overall quality and slightly superior in reproducibility to a manual SPE. We demonstrate that stable hydrogen isotope measurements of n-alkanes purified using an automated SPE extraction showed significantly lower standard errors. Furthermore, the unattended operation of the system eases the purification of large sample sets. Generally, the automated SPE using the Gilson ASPEC GX-271 for lipid biomarker separation provides qualitatively and quantitatively accurate and reproducible results with more efficient purification of compounds than the manual method.

中文翻译：

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用于脂质生物标志物纯化和稳定同位素分析的自动固相萃取程序

摘要 脂质生物标志物的有效回收率和高纯度对于碳氢化合物研究、古气候学、食品和药物分析以及医学等各个领域的化合物特异性稳定同位素分析至关重要。固相萃取 (SPE) 是从复杂混合物中纯化有机化合物的最常用方法。SPE 是实验室工作中劳动强度最大的部分，通常会限制可分析的样品数量。可靠、易于使用的自动化方法可以提高样品通量和重现性。在这里，我们介绍了一种使用 Gilson ASPEC GX-271 系统的方法，并测试了与经典手动 SPE 脂质纯化程序相比的分离质量、重现性和效率。使用同一天然土壤样品的多次提取，我们表明自动 SPE 的整体质量相当，重现性略优于手动 SPE。我们证明，使用自动 SPE 萃取纯化的正构烷烃的稳定氢同位素测量显示出显着较低的标准误差。此外，该系统的无人值守操作简化了大样本组的纯化。通常，使用 Gilson ASPEC GX-271 进行脂质生物标志物分离的自动 SPE 可提供定性和定量准确且可重现的结果，与手动方法相比，化合物纯化效率更高。我们证明，使用自动 SPE 萃取纯化的正构烷烃的稳定氢同位素测量显示出显着较低的标准误差。此外，该系统的无人值守操作简化了大样本组的纯化。通常，使用 Gilson ASPEC GX-271 进行脂质生物标志物分离的自动 SPE 可提供定性和定量准确且可重现的结果，与手动方法相比，化合物纯化效率更高。我们证明，使用自动 SPE 萃取纯化的正构烷烃的稳定氢同位素测量显示出显着较低的标准误差。此外，该系统的无人值守操作简化了大样本组的纯化。通常，使用 Gilson ASPEC GX-271 进行脂质生物标志物分离的自动 SPE 可提供定性和定量准确且可重现的结果，与手动方法相比，化合物纯化效率更高。