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Purity to recovered mass

The calculation the index performs on every record with a peptide-content figure: from the gravimetric mass balance and the purity to how many milligrams of the named compound are actually in the vial.

What the vial says
Leave equal to the claim if not measured
Karl Fischer, %w/w of cake
TFA or acetate, %w/w
%w/w
% area
Total peptide content
Target-compound content
Recovered target peptide
Against label claim
Shortfall against claim
Mass balance closes to
Index verdict

Defaults are the index medians: water 4.20 %, counter-ion 6.10 %, purity 98.99 %. Change any field and every downstream figure recomputes.

The arithmetic

total peptide content (%w/w) = 100 − water − counter-ion − residual
target-compound content      = total peptide content × purity ÷ 100
recovered target (mg)        = gross fill (mg) × target content ÷ 100
against label claim (%)      = recovered ÷ label claim × 100

Why this is the calculation that matters

Purity is a ratio of chromatographic peak areas. It answers "of everything that eluted and absorbed at 214 nm, what fraction was the main peak", and it answers no other question. In particular it says nothing whatsoever about how much material is in the vial. A vial containing 6 mg of 99.5 % pure peptide and 4 mg of water is a 99.5 % pure product and a 60 % fill.

The four components in the mass balance are exhaustive and mutually exclusive: everything in the cake is water, counter-ion, residual solvent and inorganic residue, or peptide. They must sum to 100 %. The index closes this balance to within 0.02 percentage points on every record that carries a content figure, and the build asserts it — a record where the balance does not close is a bug, not a finding.

Where the numbers come from on a real record

Water is Karl Fischer. Counter-ion is ion chromatography. Residual is usually estimated rather than measured. Total peptide content is then by difference, which is why an unmeasured residual propagates directly into it. Target-compound content multiplies that by chromatographic purity, on the assumption that the impurities have the same response factor as the target — an assumption that is wrong in detail and adequate in practice, and one the method page takes apart properly.

Across this index, 2,825 of 6,722 records carry no content figure at all, because peptide content is an extra-cost test that most submitters do not order. For those records the recovered-mass column is blank and the label claim is unchecked.