Author(s)

Cécile Konn^1,3*, Jörgen Magnér^2,4, Jean-Luc Charlou³, Nils G. Holm¹, Tomas Alsberg²

¹Department of Geological Sciences, Stockholm University, SE-10691 Stockholm, Sweden.
²Department of Environmental Science and Analytical Chemistry (ACES), Stockholm University, SE-10691 Stockholm, Sweden.
³Ifremer, Laboratoire de Géochimieet Métallogénie, F-29280 Plouzané, France.
⁴IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute Ltd., SE-10031 Stockholm, Sweden.

Investigation of amino acids in hydrothermal systems is of prime importance for the understanding of geochemistry and microbiology of hydrothermal vents and plumes, for carbon and metals global cycles, for metabolism of some hydrothermal microorganisms and for the origin of life issue. Extensive theoretical and experimental work on amino acids behaviour in hydrothermal fluids has been done, conversely only few data exist on natural samples. Because each hydrothermal vent is unique, the more data we collect the better we will be able to address each of these questions. Usually amino acids in hydrothermal fluids have been measured by HPLC-FLD. The chromatographic separation was at least 26 min and up to 135 min and the required derivatization step may be time consuming, may use harmful chemicals and may be source of contamination. Alternatively, we describe here a method combining quickness (4.5 min), high resolution (10,000), very low LOD (sub-ppb) and without derivatization. Characterisation and separation of 10 relevant proteinogenic underivatized amino acids was achieved by ion-pairing reversed-phase Ultra-high Performance Liquid Chromatography-Electrospray Ionisation-Quadrupole Time of Flight-Mass Spectrometry (UPLC-ESI-QTOF-MS). Excellent linearity in the response was obtained for all amino acids with correlation coefficients > 0.9921. This method was successfully applied to natural hydrothermal fluid samples from ultramafic-hosted vents of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge region. Results are consistent with the only 2 other studies published on ultramafic-hosted vents and complete the few available data.

Amino Acids, UPLC, Ion-Pairing, QTOF, Mass Spectrometry, Hydrothermal Fluids

Konn, C. , Magnér, J. , Charlou, J. , Holm, N. and Alsberg, T. (2015) A Method for Detection of Trace Concentrations of Underivatized Amino Acid in Hydrothermal Fluids by Ion-Pairing Reversed-Phase UPLC-ESI-QTOF-MS. American Journal of Analytical Chemistry, 6, 313-324. doi: 10.4236/ajac.2015.64030.