Abstract
A sensitive analytical method using multi-dimensional high performance liquid chromatography (MD-HPLC) has been developed to characterize the cyanobacteria toxins including microcystins RR, YR and LR, known to be hepatotoxic and act as tumor promoters, in lake water. The MD HPLC system was composed of two different columns, i.e., SUPELCOSIL DIOL as a pre-column and Develosil ODS as an analytical column, two 6-port column switching valves and a photodiode array detector.
One liter aliquots of lake water were treated with a Waters Sep-Pak® Vac tC18 cartridge, and 250 μl of the treated solution was injected into the MD-HPLC. Only two fractions on the pre-column, i.e., one fraction including microcystins LR and YR, and the other fraction includ-ing microcystin RR, were passed to the analytical column.
The added standards were recovered in the range from 91.3 to 106.8% at the 0.1 μg·l-1 level, and from 71.1 to 88.6% at the 0.02μg·l-1 level. The detection limit of the microcystins in the lake water was 0.01 μg·l-1.
The proposed method allows the simple, rapid and accurate determination of microcystins in lake water, and is suitable as a routine analysis technique.
