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We report the UV and IR photofragmentation spectroscopies of protonated synephrine in a cryogenically cooled Paul trap. Single (UV or IR) and double (UV-UV and IR-UV) resonance spectroscopies have been performed and compared to quantum chemistry calculations, allowing the assignment of the lowest-energy conformer with two rotamers depending on the orientation of the phenol hydroxyl (OH) group. The IR-UV hole burning spectrum exhibits the four expected vibrational modes in the 3 μm region, i.e., the phenol OH, Cβ-OH, and two NH2+ stretches. The striking difference is that, among these modes, only the free phenol OH mode is active through IRPD. The protonated amino group acts as a proton donor in the internal hydrogen bond and displays large frequency shifts upon isomerization expected during the multiphoton absorption process, leading to the so-called IRMPD transparency. More interestingly, while the Cβ-OH is a proton acceptor group with moderate frequency shift for the different conformations, this mode is still inactive through IRPD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The HPLC separation of six alkaloids extracted from Strychnos usambarensis leaves has been developed and optimized by means of a powerful methodology for modelling chromatographic responses, based on three steps, i.e. design of experiments (DoE), independent component analysis (ICA) and design space (DS). This study was the first application of a new optimization strategy to a complex natural matrix. The compounds separated are the isomers isostrychnopentamine and strychnopentamine, 10-hydroxyusambarine and 11-hydroxyusambarine, also strychnophylline and strychnofoline. Three LC parameters have been optimized using a multifactorial design comprising 29 experiments that includes 2 center point replicates. The parameters were the percentage of organic modifiers used at the beginning of a gradient profile which consisted in different proportions of methanol (MeOH) and acetonitrile (MeCN), the gradient time to reach 70% of organic modifiers starting from the initial percentage and the percentage of MeCN found in the mobile phase. Subsequent to the experimental design application, predictive multilinear models were developed and used in order to provide optimal analytical conditions. The optimum assay conditions were: methanol/acetonitrile-sodium pentane sulfonate (pH 2.2; 7.5mM) (33.4:66.6, v/v) at a mobile phase flow rate of 1ml/min during a 40.6min gradient time. The initial organic phase contained 3.7% MeCN and 96.3% MeOH. The method showed good agreement between the experimental data and predictive value throughout the studied parameters space. Improvement of the analysis time and optimized separation for the compounds of interest was possible due to the original and powerful tools applied. Finally, this study permitted the acquisition of isomers profiles allowing the identification of the optimal collecting period of S. usambarensis. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]