title: Ultrahigh performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry method for fast and robust quantification of anionic and aromatic metabolites.
abstract: Quantification of metabolites is of pivotal relevance in biology, where it complements more established omics techniques such as transcriptomics and proteomics. Here, we present a 25 min ion-pairing ultrahigh performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry method that was developed for comprehensive coverage of central metabolism (glycolysis, pentose phosphate pathway, and tricarboxylic acid cycle) and closely related biosynthetic reactions. We demonstrate quantification of 138 compounds, including carboxylic acids, amino acids, sugar phosphates, nucleotides, and functionalized aromatics. Biologically relevant isomers such as sugar phosphates are individually quantified by combining chromatographic separation and fragmentation. The obtained sensitivity and robustness enabled the detection of more than half all tested compounds in each of eight diverse biological samples of 0.5-50 mg dry cell weight. We recommend this method for routine and yet comprehensive quantification of primary metabolites in a wide variety of biological matrices.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Molecular Systems Biology, ETH Zurich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Joerg Martin
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Buescher
authors.forename: Sofia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Moco
authors.forename: Uwe
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Sauer
authors.forename: Nicola
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Zamboni
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002851:Chromatography, High Pressure Liquid / Q000379:methods*; D007536:Isomerism; D055432:Metabolomics / Q000379:methods*; D051379:Mice; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D053719:Tandem Mass Spectrometry / Q000379:methods*; D013997:Time Factors