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Writer's pictureDaniel Petras

A deep dive into the chemical composition of the ocean

Our latest paper was just published in Environmental Science & Technology. Yay!

We took a deep dive into the molecular complexity of dissolved organic matter (DOM), a central component of global biogeochemical cycles. Despite its environmental significance, DOM remains a long-standing analytical challenge to identify at the molecular level due to its extreme complexity. To address this, we developed a two-dimensional liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (2D-LC-MS/MS) approach. By combining two reversed-phase dimensions with different pH levels, we improved the chromatographic separation of DOM, significantly improving the quality of MS/MS spectra and increasing the rates of molecular annotation. We applied our new method to samples from coastal Southern California and the open ocean near Hawaii, annotating more than 600 molecular structures—an improvement of up to 90% compared to traditional 1D LC-MS/MS techniques and perhaps the deepest look into DOM we took so far.


If that sounds exciting, you can find the paper here.





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