Fig. 8.

Miniaturization in clinical metabolomics.

A Bruker EVOQ triple quadrupole gas chromatography-mass spectrometer (Bruker, MA, USA) in the authors’ laboratory (PMH) (left panel). The instrument is used to provide metabolic profiling for the diagnosis of inborn errors of metabolism by providing semi-quantitative information on urinary metabolites such as simple sugars, amino acids, dicarboxylic acids, nucleotides and pterins. Behind the door of the column oven (A, left panel), the 15-m column is compactly coiled into a circular bundle (top right). The heated sample enters the column at inlet C and eventually emerges from the column through D, to reach the ion source (bottom right). The remarkable length of the chromatography column accounts for the separating power of the gas chromatograph.