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Y S Fung

Publications and source records attributed to Y S Fung.

7 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2000

Capillary electrophoresis for determination of free and albumin-bound bilirubin and the investigation of drug interaction with bilirubin-bound albumin.

Capillary electrophoresis (CE) is a promising technique for assessment of free bilirubin and its interaction with albumin, as it requires only a small sample volume and provides a rapid and efficient separation of free bilirubin from its albumin-bound complex in a one-phase system. In order to maintain the equilibrium without dissociation of bilirubin from the albumin/bilirubin complex as in real clinical conditions, the coupling of CE with frontal analysis (FA) was investigated. A very large sample plug was introduced hydrodynamically into the capillary (36 cm length, 50 microm inner diameter) at 15 psi x s to develop the frontal conditions during CE separation. The working conditions for CE/FA separation of bilirubin and albumin were optimized as follows: +20 kV; running buffer, 10 mmol/L phosphate and 1 mmol/L ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA), pH 7.4. The working range for bilirubin was found to vary from 5 to 206 micromol/L; precision with relative standard deviation (RSD) <2.0% for n = 3 and detection limit (signal to noise, S/N = 2) was 2 micromol/L. The residual binding capacity of a simulated cord blood serum for bilirubin was 26 mg/100 mL at pH 7.4. Bilirubin was shown to be displaced from albumin when aspirin was added. The free bilirubin concentration was found to increase to clinical significant concentrations from 11.9 to 21.1% when increasing aspirin was added in the range of 5-50 mg/100 mL, respectively. Thus, the investigation of aspirin displacement of bilirubin from albumin is clinically important and the CE/ FA method is a suitable procedure for this purpose.

Bilirubin↗
PubMed1999

Capillary electrophoresis for trace metal ion analysis in environmental studies.

A new buffer system consisting of 30 mM hydroxylamine hydrochloride, 0.1 mM 1,10-phenanthroline, 1% methanol and pH 3.7 was optimized for simultaneous determination of water and acid leachable metals from respirable, fine and coarse air particulate matters. A reducing environment was used to resolve metal ions with variable oxidation states. A suitable counteranion was employed to enable acidic pH to be used and methanol was added to improve the resolution of the electropherograms and to achieve simultaneous determination of several metal ions. Compared to existing capillary electrophoresis (CE) buffers, the buffer developed, based on direct UV detection of ion-pair with weak interaction, gives improved resolution and sharper, more stable and well-resolved peaks. It detects total irons and solves interfering problems due to the variable oxidation states of iron in environmental samples. Compared to existing mostly alkaline CE buffers for metal analysis, the acidic nature of the buffer system developed makes the pretreatment step simpler and reduces the risk of reagent contamination. Satisfactory working ranges (15-5500 ppb) and detection limits (0.5-3 ppb) were obtained for leachable Zn, Cu, Co, Fe and Cd. The NIST 1648 urban particulate matters were found to leach out 2.53-42.8% water-extractable and 2.76-71.7% acid-extractable Zn, Cu, Fe and Cd. High iron contents, and lower copper and zinc concentrations were found in respirable suspended particulates (RSP) sampled in Hong Kong.

Air Pollutants↗
PubMed1993

Neural networks for molecular sequence classification.

A neural network classification method has been developed as an alternative approach to the search/organization problem of large molecular databases. Two artificial neural systems have been implemented on a Cray supercomputer for rapid protein/nucleic acid sequence classifications. The neural networks used are three-layered, feed-forward networks that employ back-propagation learning algorithm. The molecular sequences are encoded into neural input vectors by applying an n-gram hashing method or a SVD (singular value decomposition) method. Once trained with known sequences in the molecular databases, the neural system becomes an associative memory capable of classifying unknown sequences based on the class information embedded in its neural interconnections. The protein system, which classifies proteins into PIR (Protein Identification Resource) superfamilies, showed a 82% to a close to 100% sensitivity at a speed that is about an order of magnitude faster than other search methods. The pilot nucleic acid system, which classifies ribosomal RNA sequences according to phylogenetic groups, has achieved a 100% classification accuracy. The system could be used to reduce the database search time and help organize the molecular sequence databases. The tool is generally applicable to any databases that are organized according to family relationships.

Base Sequence↗
PubMed1990

Polarographic determination of sorbic acid in fruit juices and soft drinks.

A simple differential-pulse polarographic method using a laboratory-built hanging mercury drop electrode as the working electrode was developed for the determination of sorbic acid in fruit juices and soft drinks. Sorbic acid was extracted from the samples with diethyl ether. After reduction of the ethereal solution to a small volume by direct evaporation, the residual ether was dissolved in the supporting electrolyte (25 ml of acetonitrile + 1 ml of 0.06 M acetic acid + 0.8 g of tetraethylammonium bromide). Peak current was measured at -1.7 V. The working range of the method, without dilution or pre-concentration of the samples, was from 4 to 229 p.p.m. for the original juice and drink samples. The validity of the method was confirmed by parallel determinations using the method of the Association of Official Analytical Chemists and by recovery tests on a large variety of juice samples. Satisfactory recoveries and agreement in results from the two methods were obtained. The recovery and precision (relative standard deviation) of the method were 97 +/- 4 and 100 +/- 3%, respectively, for blackcurrant juice for five determinations.

Beverages↗