Chromatography Forum

Why cannot molecules like ATP be analyzed by GC-MS?
Can somebody provide a reference?
Thank you!

Tomas

Perhaps I should write a bit more about my purpose... We are publishing a metabolomics paper using LC-MS and one of the reviewers asked us to compare our method to GC-MS. We have no experience with GC-MS, so it is difficult for us to make a statement on this..
I heard before that some metabolites like ATP are difficult to measure using GC-MS, so I am wondering why is that?

The simple answer is that ATP has a negligible vapour pressure (and probably decomposes when heated) and so cannot be transported through a gas chromatography column. Presuming that the referee has a valid reason for asking, there may be some methods based on derivatization. You must do a literature search.

Peter