Publications by authors named "Roma Tauler"

Monitoring dissolved organic matter (DOM) in surface waters is essential for assessing ecosystem health and detecting pollution. However, conventional spectroscopic techniques often provide limited information about the electrochemical behavior of DOM. This study integrates electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) with classical methods such as UV-Vis absorption and fluorescence spectroscopies to improve DOM characterization in river water samples.

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Acute mesenteric ischemia (AMI) is a life-threatening, rapidly progressive disease. Conventional diagnostic methods have their own limitations. Therefore, a non-invasive, real-time and efficient diagnostic method is needed.

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Pharmaceutical residues in surface waters are an emerging environmental and public health issue, yet their biological impacts on aquatic life remain poorly understood. This study presents a cost-effective bioanalytical framework using Daphnia magna juveniles and zebrafish (Danio rerio) embryos to evaluate neurotoxic and cardiotoxic effects of pharmaceutical mixtures in rivers downstream of wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) effluents. Water samples from three rivers in north-eastern Spain (Besòs, Llobregat, and Onyar) were concentrated up to 5- and 20-fold using solid-phase extraction.

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The huge potential of liquid chromatography-high-resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS) still comes along with the challenges of data analysis. Regions of interest multivariate curve resolution (ROIMCR) is a valid chemometric tool when working in data-independent acquisition (DIA), since it provides a link between precursor and product ions based on chromatographic and spectral profiles. Still, the quality of the ROIMCR models should be carefully evaluated for a consequent reliable annotation of non-target chemicals.

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Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) is a powerful, non-invasive analytical technique extensively utilized in chemistry as it simultaneously captures morphological and chemical information from samples across a broad spectrum of chemically informative wavelengths. In this context, morphological information refers to the spatial structure, shape, texture, and distribution of elements within the image. Enhancing its already widespread application requires reducing the computational load of the voluminous hyperspectral images while unmixing signals from different chemical species with unknown spectral fingerprints.

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Mining and other essential economic activities have a long historical contamination impact on diverse aquatic environments, such as the Doce River Basin (DRB), in Southeast Brazil. High concentrations of metals combined with organic chemicals released from multiple sources of contaminants may trigger complex toxicity pathways that are complicated to interpret and distinguish. This study aimed to investigate mechanisms of toxicity of environmental chemicals from DRB using a comprehensive untargeted LC-HRMS metabolomics approach (data-independent acquisition of all ion-fragmentation mode), in fish embryos (Rhamdia quelen) exposed to complex chemical mixtures.

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The composition of yerba mate implies significant potential in the food, pharmaceutical, and cosmetic industries, which requires standardization of the raw material. This study explores the simultaneous influence of growing sites, harvest seasons, and clones on the spectralprint of leaves through near-infrared (NIR) and mid-infrared (MIR) spectroscopy coupled with ANOVA Common Dimensions (AComDim) multivariate analysis. MIR spectroscopy identifies only the main effects of growing site and harvesting season, and the interaction between these factors.

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Background: Multivariate curve resolution methods are usually confronted with non-unique pure component factors. This rotational ambiguity can be represented by ranges of feasible profiles, which are equally compatible with the imposed constraints. Sensor-wise N-BANDS is an effective algorithm for the calculation of the bounds of feasible profiles in the presence of noise, but suffers from high computational cost.

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Pharmaceutical compounds have become one of the main contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) due to their high usage and increased release into the environment. This study aims to assess the effects caused by three widely consumed hepatotoxic pharmaceutical compounds: an antibiotic (amoxicillin), an antiepileptic (carbamazepine), and an antidepressant (trazodone), on human health when indirectly exposed to toxicologically relevant concentrations (30, 15, and 7.5 μM for amoxicillin and carbamazepine, and 4, 2, and 1 μM for trazodone).

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Background: Metabolomics plays a critical role in deciphering metabolic alterations within individuals, demanding the use of sophisticated analytical methodologies to navigate its intricate complexity. While many studies focus on single biofluid types, simultaneous analysis of multiple matrices enhances understanding of complex biological mechanisms. Consequently, the development of data fusion methods enabling multiblock analysis becomes essential for comprehensive insights into metabolic dynamics.

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Data-independent acquisition (DIA) mode in liquid chromatography (LC) high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) has emerged as a powerful strategy in untargeted metabolomics for detecting a broad range of metabolites. However, the use of this approach also represents a challenge in the analysis of the large datasets generated. The regions of interest (ROI) multivariate curve resolution (MCR) approach can help in the identification and characterization of unknown metabolites in their mixtures by linking their MS1 and MS2 DIA spectral signals.

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Sulfamethoxazole (SMX) is one of the most widely used antibiotics worldwide and has been detected at high concentrations in wastewater treatment plant effluents and river waters. In this study, the SMX degradation process combining the simultaneous chlorine oxidation and UV photodegradation is assessed and compared with both photodegradation and chlorine oxidation processes individually. Photodegradation and Chlorine/UV tests were performed using Suntest CPS equipment.

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Introduction: This study has investigated the temporal disruptive effects of tributyltin (TBT) on lipid homeostasis in Daphnia magna. To achieve this, the study used Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS) analysis to analyze biological samples of Daphnia magna treated with TBT over time. The resulting data sets were multivariate and three-way, and were modeled using bilinear and trilinear non-negative factor decomposition chemometric methods.

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The Regions of Interest Multivariate curve Resolution (ROIMCR) methodology has gained significance for analyzing mass spectrometry data. The new SigSel package improves the ROIMCR methodology by providing a filtering step to reduce computational costs and to identify chemical compounds giving low-intensity signals. SigSel allows the visualization and assessment of ROIMCR results and filters out components resolved as interferences and background noise.

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New data-independent acquisition (DIA) modes coupled to chromatographic separations are opening new perspectives in the processing of massive mass spectrometric (MS) data using chemometric methods. In this work, the application of the regions of interest multivariate curve resolution (ROIMCR) method is shown for the simultaneous analysis of MS1 and MS2 DIA raw data obtained by liquid chromatography coupled to quadrupole-time-of-flight MS analysis. The ROIMCR method proposed in this work relies on the intrinsic bilinear structure of the MS1 and MS2 experimental data which allows us for the fast direct resolution of the elution and spectral profiles of all sample constituents giving measurable MS signals, without needing any further data pretreatment such as peak matching, alignment, or modeling.

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Although numerous studies support a dose-effect relationship between Endocrine disruptors (EDs) and the progression and malignancy of tumors, the impact of a chronic exposure to non-lethal concentrations of EDs in cancer remains unknown. More specifically, a number of studies have reported the impact of Aldrin on a variety of cancer types, including prostate cancer. In previous studies, we demonstrated the induction of the malignant phenotype in DU145 prostate cancer (PCa) cells after a chronic exposure to Aldrin (an ED).

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The impact of hazardous materials, such as Hg, on life is far from being understood and due to the high number of polluted sites it has generated great concern. A biochemical and lipidomic approach was used to assess the effects of Hg on the saltmarsh halophyte Halimione portulacoides. Plants were collected at two sites of a Hg contaminated saltmarsh.

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Air pollution constitutes an environmental problem that it is known to cause many serious adverse effects on the cardiovascular and respiratory systems. The chemical characterization of particulate matter (PM) is key for a better understanding of the associations between chemistry and toxicological effects. In this work, the chemical composition and biological effects of fifteen PM air filter samples from three air quality stations in Catalonia with contrasting air quality backgrounds were investigated.

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In the present contribution, a new approach based on mutual information (MI) is proposed for exploring the independence of feasible solutions in two component systems. Investigating how independent are different feasible solutions can be a way to bridge the gap between independent component analysis (ICA) and multivariate curve resolution (MCR) approaches and, to the best of our knowledge, has not been investigated before. For this purpose, different chromatographic and hyperspectral imaging (HSI) datasets were simulated, considering different noise levels and different degrees of overlap for two-component systems.

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In this work, the Regions of Interest-Multivariate Curve Resolution (ROIMCR) method is proposed for the analysis of non-target metabolomics data. Samples from marine mussels (Mytilus galloprovincialis) exposed to a sublethal concentration (10 μg/L) of sulfamethoxazole (SMX) during 4 days in different seasonal conditions (summer and winter) were analyzed by High-Performance Liquid Chromatography - High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry (HPLC-HRMS) to study the effect of their exposure to SMX and the different seasonal conditions. The Regions of Interest (ROI) procedure has been applied for data filtering, compression, preprocessing and storage steps.

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In this work, three chemometrics-based approaches are compared for quantification purposes when using two-dimensional liquid chromatography (LC×LC-MS), taking as a study case the quantification of amino acids in commercial drug mixtures. Although the approaches have been already used for one-dimensional gas or liquid chromatography, the main novelty of this work is the demonstration of their applicability to LC×LC-MS datasets. Besides, steps such as peak alignment and modelling, commonly applied in this type of data analysis, are not required with the approaches proposed here.

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The use of chemometric methods based on the analysis of variances (ANOVA) allows evaluation of the statistical significance of the experimental factors used in a study. However, classical multivariate ANOVA (MANOVA) has a number of requirements that make it impractical for dealing with metabolomics data. For this reason, in recent years, different options have appeared that overcome these limitations.

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Raman microspectroscopy is a label-free technique which is very suited for the investigation of pharmacokinetics of cellular uptake, mechanisms of interaction, and efficacies of drugs in vitro. However, the complexity of the spectra makes the identification of spectral patterns associated with the drug and subsequent cellular responses difficult. Indeed, multivariate methods that relate spectral features to the inoculation time do not normally take into account the kinetics involved, and important theoretical information which could assist in the elucidation of the relevant spectral signatures is excluded.

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Multivariate Curve Resolution Alternating Least Squares (MCR-ALS) can analyze three-way data under the assumption of a trilinear model using the trilinearity constraint. However, the rigid application of this constraint can produce unrealistic solutions in practice due to the inadequacy of the analyzed data to the characteristics and requirements of the trilinear model. Different methods for the relaxation of the trilinear model data requirements have been proposed, like in the PARAFAC2 and in the direct non-trilinear decomposition (DNTD) methods.

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