Account: characterization and identification of microcystins by mass spectrometry.

In this brief overview, the authors describe mass spectral techniques for the detection and identification of microcystin toxins. Microcystins are secondary metabolites produced by cyanobacteria. Determination of these toxic compounds and discovery of new variants is very important as they pose a great danger to the human food chain.

Detailed study of cyanobacterial microcystins using high performance tandem mass spectrometry.

Microcystins (MC) are a large group of toxic cyclic peptides, produced by cyanobacteria in eutrophic water systems. Identification of MC variants mostly relies on liquid chromatography (LC) combined with collision-induced dissociation (CID) mass spectrometry. Deviations from the essential amino acid complement are a common feature of these natural products, which makes the CID analysis more difficult and not always successful.

Co-occurrence of microcystin and microginin congeners in Brazilian strains of Microcystis sp.

Species of Microcystis are the most common bloom-forming cyanobacteria in several countries. Despite extensive studies regarding the production of bioactive cyanopeptides in this genus, there are limited data on isolated strains from Brazil. Three Microcystis sp.