LEE792C - UCC- Provision of a High-Performance Anion-Exchange Chromatography with Pulse Amperometric Detection (HPAEC-PAD) system & AutoSa

Tender description

The School of Microbiology, University College Cork, wishes to procure a High-Performance Anion-Exchange Chromatography with Pulse Amperometric Detection (HPAEC-PAD) system for analytical separation, determination and quantification of carbohydrates from biological samples. The research aims to understand how bifidobacteria, which represent the dominant bacteria in breast-fed infants, can colonize and interact with their (human) host to elicit beneficial activities. In particular, the research group studies bifidobacterial carbohydrate metabolism in order to understand how diet may influence the presence and activity of bifidobacteria to facilitate gut colonisation. To achieve this objective, bacterial cultures fermentations are carried out routinely in the laboratory in order to determine the grow capabilities of bifidobacterial strains on different carbohydrates, analysing the reaction products by HPEAC-PAD. Furthermore, the determination of the enzymatic activity on carbohydrates is a key activity in the laboratory since the enzymes involved in carbohydrate metabolism have important biotechnological applications in the food industry. Carbohydrates are difficult to analyze using common chromatography and detection methods. In this regard, HPEAC-PAD takes advantage of the weakly acidic nature of carbohydrates for highly selective separations at high pH using strong anion exchange stationary phases. Its specificity is ensured by the separation and the electrochemical detection that has been optimized for carbohydrate analysis makes this methodology necessary for the analysis of the reaction products (carbohydrates) and is an important step in generating pure compounds that can be collected for further analysis.