Marijuana Moment
A federal science agency has added dozens of new marijuana components to an official government library of compounds that is used to help identify unknown substances in food, drugs, cosmetics, the environment, body fluids and forensic evidence.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced last week that the cannabis components were being added as part of a broader update to its library of mass spectra measured from hundreds of thousands of compounds, known formally as Standard Reference Database 1A.
The minor cannabinoids, NIST said, are “trace chemicals hidden inside the cannabis plant that are being explored for medical uses, including pain relief.”
In response to a query from Marijuana Moment, NIST officials specified that 41 new spectra related to cannabinoid compounds have been added in this update on top of the 80 that were already included in the library.
“By introducing 41 new cannabinoid compounds to the NIST26 library—bringing the total to 121—this expanded collection continues to reflect a strategic selection of compounds that are of significant importance to numerous fields including forensics, biomedical research, food science and environmental chemistry,” NIST data scientist Tytus Mak, who selects the compounds that are added to the database, told Marijuana Moment.
To build out the NIST Mass Spectral Library, scientists use a mass spectrometer to effectively generate chemical fingerprints for compounds. The device “ionizes and shatters a compound into charged fragments and then sorts those fragments by their mass-to-charge ratio,” the agency said.
When researchers or product manufacturers find a compound of unknown identity, they can us their own mass spectrometry device and then compare the results to NIST’s library to find a match.
“Just as a person may be identified by comparing their DNA to a database, a chemical compound may be identified by comparing its mass spectrum to the NIST database,” Bill Wallace, group leader of NIST’s Mass Spectrometry Data Center, said.
Federal Science Agency Adds New Cannabis Compounds To Its Library Of ‘Chemical Fingerprints’
