Development of a metabolomics plantform using Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry

Abstract

Metabolomics intends holistic analyses of enormous numbers of organic compounds with different physicochemical properties. This constitutes a tremendous challenge for analytical chemistry when nearly infinite numbers of unknown metabolites are simultaneously analyzed. In other words, for successful metabolomics, every analytical platform should be customized to meet different research objectives. Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (FT-ICR/MS) offers extremely high levels of resolution and sensitivity. The high-resolving power allows direct infusion analyses of crude biological samples without chromatographic separation steps and derivatization reactions, and high-throughput metabolic profiling is possible through assignment of only one or a few molecular formulas to each single m/z value in the spectra. With the aid of the extreme resolving power FT-ICR/MS, we have developed a metabolomics platform of high-throughput metabolic profiling and metabolite candidate identification integrating a data processing system, the Dr.DMASS program (http://kanaya.naist.jp/DrDMASS/), and a metabolite-species database, KNApSAcK (http://kanaya.aist-nara.ac.jp/KNApSAcK/). We discuss the potential of this FT-ICR/MS-based metabolomics scheme as a general metabolomics tool through metabolic profiling and differential metabolomics studies. A future direction of FT-ICR/MS-based metabolomics is also discussed.