The ability to measure stable hydrogen isotope values in a multitude of compounds is beneficial for various research fields, such as plant and aquatic ecology, biogeochemistry, paleoclimatology, and food forensics. Plant sugars are compounds of particular interest, but current preparation methods are not time-efficient. A new paper by PPE members Selina Hugger, Meisha Holloway-Phillips, Ansgar Kahmen, and Daniel Nelson targeting this bottleneck was accepted this week in Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry. This work developed a new method to optimize sugar extraction from plant samples and purify soluble sugars from the initial extracts using reverse phase chromatography/solid phase extraction. Carbon-bound hydrogen can then be measured on acetylated sugars using compound-specific isotope techniques. The new method approximately doubles the sample throughput rate, reduces potential for preparation errors, and allows sugar and starch hydrogen isotope values to be measured from the same initial material.

link to publication: https://doi.org/10.1002/rcm.10161