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Figure 2 | Critical Care

Figure 2

From: Clinical review: Exogenous surfactant therapy for acute lung injury/acute respiratory distress syndrome - where do we go from here?

Figure 2

Mass spectra for surfactant phosphatidylcholine from humans. (a) Typical endogenous phosphatidylcholine (PC) composition and (b) the corresponding deuteriated newly synthesised phosphatidylcholine (D9PC) species. The newly synthesised PC species displays peaks 9 mass units higher than the endogenous PC species and is easily detected by mass spectrometry. The endogenous PC signal intensity in (a) is 100 times higher than the newly produced species. From the relative proportion it is possible to calculate synthetic rates of each PC species. x axis, mass/charge ratio; y axis, signal intensity (%).

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