Design, synthesis, and characterization of new cyclic d,l-α-alternate amino acid peptides by capillary electrophoresis coupled to electrospray ionization mass spectrometry.

The self-assembly of peptide nanotubes (PNTs) depends on the structure and chemistry of cyclic peptide (CP) monomers, having an impact on their properties, making the choice of their monomers and their characterization a great challenge. We synthesized for the first time a new set of eight original CP sequences of 8, 10, and 12 d,l-α-alternate amino acids with a controlled internal diameter from 7 to 13 Å. They present various properties (e.g., diameter, global surface charge, hydrophobicity) that can open the way to new applications. Their structure and purity were determined thanks to a capillary electrophoresis coupled to electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (CE-ESI-MS) methodology developed for the first time for this purpose. The CPs were successfully separated in a basic hydro-organic background electrolyte (BGE, pH 8.0, H2O/EtOH 50:50, v/v) and analyzed in MS positive mode. The effect of CP structure on electrophoretic mobility was studied, and the mass spectra were deeply analyzed. This methodology allowed verifying their purity and the absence of linear peptide precursors as well as their stability when stored over several months. Therefore, we have developed a new CE-ESI-MS methodology for the structure and purity control of interesting potential precursors for PNTs that could be employed as nanoplatforms in diagnostics or as pseudo sieving tools for separative purposes.

Simultaneous determination of binary mixtures of trimethoprim and sulfamethoxazole or sulphamethoxypyridazine by the bivariate calibration spectrophotometric method.

The bivariate calibration algorithm was applied to the spectrophotometric simultaneous determination of trimethoprim (TMP), sulfamethoxazole (SMX) or sulphamethoxypyridazine (SMP) binary mixtures in pharmaceutical and veterinary products. The results obtained were compared with those from derivative spectrophotometry. The statistical evaluation of the method bias showed that the proposed procedure is comparable with commonly used first-derivative spectrophotometry. However, the advantage of bivariate calibration is its simplicity, due to the minimal spectra manipulation when compared with derivative techniques.