PARENT SESSION

3. Algal Toxins
Hall 6
8:30 AM - 5:30 PM, Wednesday, 30 April 2003
Chair: Pflugmacher, S.¹, ¹
Co-chair: Wiegand, C.², ²

(WE4/5) New Mass Spectrometry Methods for the Determination of Polyether Marine Toxins in Shellfish and Phytoplankton.

James, Kevin¹, ¹ Cork Institute of Technology, Bishopstown, Cork, Ireland

ABSTRACT- Polyether toxins that contaminate shellfish cause acute human intoxications arising from the consumption of bivalve molluscs such as scallops, mussels, clams and oysters. Liquid chromatography - mass spectrometry (LC-MS) methods have been valuable techniques in the discovery of the marine dinoflagellates that produce these toxins. Four classes have now been characterised. a) azaspiracids from Protoperidinium crassipes, b) dinophysistoxins (DTXs) and c) pectenotoxins (PTXs), both from Dinophysis acuta and d) yessotoxins (YTXs) from Protoceratium reticulatum. The co-occurrence of multiple toxins from different classes in the same shellfish sample and the poor availability of reference standard toxins has led to the development of highly sensitive LC-MS methods for the regulatory control of toxins. Electrospray ionisation (ESI) with ion-trap MS has been used to conduct MSⁿ experiments that permits the elucidation of characteristic fragmentation pathways to identify new toxins. Nano-LC and nano-ESI linked with an orthogonal hybrid quadrupole time-of-flight (QqTOF) MS has been used to produce high mass accuracy spectra and offer the best options for toxinological studies on phytoplankton that are available only by manual collection of cells from microscope slides.

Key words: shellfish , Polyether Marine Toxins , phytoplankton