Identification of potential antioxidant compounds in the essential oil of thyme by gas chromatography with mass spectrometry and multivariate calibration techniques

Aligning retention time shifts in HPLC three-dimensional spectra by icoshift approach combined with data arrangement methods and the release of a graphical user interface

High-performance liquid chromatography coupled with photodiode array detection has been extensively applied in many fields and the peaks among the analyzed samples can be shifted due to the variations of instrumental and experimental conditions. In multivariate analysis, retention time alignment is an important pretreatment step. Hence, the shifted peaks in high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with photodiode array detection three-dimensional spectra should be aligned for further analysis. Being motivated by this purpose, the interval correlated shifting method combined with the proposed data arrangement methods are recommended and employed on high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with photodiode array detection data as a demonstration. We validate the alignment performance of the proposed method through comparison the consistency of the retention time before and after alignment. The obtained results demonstrated that the proposed method is capable of successful aligning the employed data. Additionally, the interval correlated shifting method combined with the data arrangement modes is implemented in an easy-to-use graphical user interface environment and so can be operated easily by users not familiar with programming languages.

Combination of GC/FID/Mass spectrometry fingerprints and multivariate calibration techniques for recognition of antimicrobial constituents of Myrtus communis L. essential oil

Myrtus communis L. is an aromatic evergreen shrub and its essential oil possesses known powerful antimicrobial activity. However, the contribution of each component of the plant essential oil in observed antimicrobial ability is unclear. In this study, chemical components of the essential oil samples of the plant were identified qualitatively and quantitatively using GC/FID/Mass spectrometry system, antimicrobial activity of these samples against three microbial strains were evaluated and, these two set of data were correlated using chemometrics methods. Three chemometric methods including principal component regression (PCR), partial least squares (PLS) and orthogonal projections to latent structures (OPLS) were applied for the study. These methods showed similar results, but, OPLS was selected as preferred method due to its predictive and interpretational ability, facility, repeatability and low time-consuming. The results showed that α-pinene, 1,8 cineole, β-pinene and limonene are the highest contributors in antimicrobial properties of M. communis essential oil. Other researches have reported high antimicrobial activities for the plant essential oils rich in these compounds confirming our findings.