Development of metabolome analysis technologies using LC-TOF-MS

Abstract

In general, metabolome analysis technology is utilized for comprehensive analysis of ionic metabolites derived from a biological organism. When this technology is applied to industry such as the fields of pharmaceuticals, foods, chemistry, and agriculture, we must handle the quantitative measurement of a large variety of small-molecule organic compounds. Since HPLC is used for separation and analysis of a wide variety of organic compounds, we aimed at the development of metabolome analysis technology using LC-TOF-MS that was the mass spectrometer equipped with HPLC. We chose Waters LCT Premier XE system as LC-TOF-MS and developed an automated analysis system (called Metalys2) of MS spectral data produced from this LC-TOF-MS. In this metabolome analysis, we thoroughly reduce noises and extract compound peak information from the spectral data. Subsequently, Metalys2 enables us to obtain precise mass information of the identified organic compounds. By comparing the obtained precise mass with various databases, we add annotations such as chemical formulas and compound names to each compound. Furthermore, comparison of organic compounds identified by Metalys2 between two samples enables us to elucidate qualitative and quantitative differences in compounds between these samples.