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ANANBIOANAL - 2010
Pharmaceutical R & D Summit
doi:10.4172/2155-9872.1000076
Carbon Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometric Studies in Medicine
Madhavan Soundararajan
Department of Biochemistry, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, USA
T
13
he use of stable carbon isotopes in metabolic research on humans has
expanded significantly since the early 1980s. This is due to a combination of
factors such as the availability of increasing variety of labeled compounds, absence
of health risk from radiation and more significantly due to the development of
sophisticated instrumentation and greater availability of analytical facilities. Usage
of 13
C-Methionine in the methionine Breath Test for measuring hepatic mitochondrial
function, and 13
C-Phenylalanine in 13
especially on the biochemistry, physiology and disease status. Some examples
of this include the utilization of 13
C
substrates such as sugars, amino acids and fatty acids are readily commercially
available, proteins and carbohydrates generally are not. One can obtain these
by labeling photosynthetic organisms with 13
CO2 during photosynthesis and then
isolating the compound of interest. One can also take advantage of the naturally
enriched substrates for metabolic studies by a prudent selection of these material
from plants following different photosynthetic pathways. Most of the human diet is
derived from food items from plants following the C3
significant physiological information which might lead to the synthesis of newer
pharmacological compounds.
display more negative carbon-13 signature than the plants that follow C4
and C4
photosynthetic metabolism. Thus by a simple and imaginative manipulation of the
diet by mixing material obtained from both C3
photosynthetic pathway which
type of
plants, one could obtain a
C labeled substrates in human studies has provided an array of information
C-octanoate in the Gastric Mobility Breath Test,
C-Phenylalanine Breath Test. While simpler 13
ANALBIOANAL-2010
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