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Updated: Jul 6, 2026
Extraction of Non-Protein Amino Acids from Cyanobacteria for Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry Analysis
Published on: December 9, 2022
Effective determination method for a cyanobacterial neurotoxin, beta-N-methylamino-L-alanine
Takuya Kubo1, Noriko Kato, Ken Hosoya
1Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Tohoku University, Aoba 6-6-20, Aramaki, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-8579, Japan. kubo@mail.kankyo.tohoku.ac.jp
Abstract:
We developed a simple and effective analysis procedure that includes pretreatment and determination methods for beta-N-methylamino-l-alanine (BMAA), a cyanobacterial neurotoxin. BMAA may be produced by all known groups of cyanobacteria living in freshwater as well as marine environments. In this paper, we report a novel determination method for BMAA. A cation-exchange resin was effective for the selective concentration of BMAA from cyanobacterial extracts and yielded a high recovery rate. Moreover, liquid chromatography (LC)-electrospray ionization mass spectrometry with a hydrophilic LC column was effective for determining BMAA levels. The quantitation limit for BMAA based on selected ion monitoring (SIM) was determined as 0.5 ng at a signal/noise ratio of 5.
