Defining Blood Plasma and Serum Metabolome by GC-MS

Abstract

Metabolomics uses advanced analytical chemistry methods to analyze metabolites in biological samples. The most intensively studied samples are blood and its liquid components: plasma and serum. Armed with advanced equipment and progressive software solutions, the scientific community has shown that small molecules’ roles in living systems are not limited to traditional “building blocks” or “just fuel” for cellular energy. As a result, the conclusions based on studying the metabolome are finding practical reflection in molecular medicine and a better understanding of fundamental biochemical processes in living systems. This review is not a detailed protocol of metabolomic analysis. However, it should support the reader with information about the achievements in the whole process of metabolic exploration of human plasma and serum using mass spectrometry combined with gas chromatography.

Therapeutic effect and mechanism of Anemarrhenae Rhizoma on Alzheimer’s disease based on multi-platform metabolomics analyses

“…Many combinations of analytical methods have been developed to achieve adequate metabolite coverage ( Alseekh et al, 2021 ). GC-MS or LC-QTOF/MS in metabolomics analysis takes advantage of the high separation efficiency of the chromatographic system and the high sensitivity of MS detection ( Kiseleva et al, 2021 ). Samples should be collected appropriately and extracted to maintain analyte yield in these two methods; however, samples for GC–MS must be performed an additional step, derivatization, to prevent degradation of the molecules at high temperatures and increase the volatility of the volatility metabolites ( Zeki et al, 2020 ).…”

“…GC-MS is the most suitable alternative for identifying volatile and semi-volatile metabolites. It has been widely employed to profile low molecular weight metabolites in AD research, such as free fatty acids, cholesterol derivatives neurotransmitters, and others ( Luan et al, 2019 ; Kiseleva et al, 2021 ). In this research, the combination of GC-MS with LC-QTOF/MS also achieved a comprehensive pathway analysis result.…”

Optimization of a GC-MS method for the profiling of microbiota-dependent metabolites in blood samples: An application to type 2 diabetes and prediabetes

“…Namely, differences in metabolite peak areas of various derivatives were observed in different biological matrices as a result of changing the SIL time and temperature (Eylem et al, 2022). The most frequently reported temperature and duration of SIL for both matrices range between 30 and 70 °C and 30-120 min (Danielsson et al, 2012;Fiehn, 2016;Moros et al, 2017;Kiseleva et al, 2021). Therefore, we compared SIL conditions (37 °C and 70 °C for 30 and 60 min, respectively) the most commonly used in the metabolomics studies.…”

“…MDMs are found in a variety of biological samples such as feces, urine, serum or plasma (Chen et al, 2019). According to Chen et al (2019), plasma and serum are non-invasively obtained biomatrices and analysis of their metabolome may reflect the changes in the metabolome of the whole organism (Kiseleva et al, 2021), including changes in MDMs composition (Vernocchi et al, 2016). Additionally, both of these bloodderived samples have been used in many GC-MS metabolomics studies related to the development of T2DM (Lin et al, 2017;Chen et al, 2019).…”

“…In order to extend the coverage of MDMs measured with GC-MS, selection of a suitable solvent for the protein precipitation or extraction (He et al, 2021) and a transformation of analysed metabolites into more volatile forms through the derivatisation process, is required (Moldoveanu and David, 2018). Many solvents like ACN (Mojsak et al, 2021), MeOH (Trygg et al, 2005) or mixtures of solvents such as: ACN:isoProp:H 2 O (v:v:v; 3:3:2) (Fiehn, 2016;Kiseleva et al, 2021); MeOH:H 2 O (v:v; 9:1) (Malm et al, 2016), MeOH:isoProp:H 2 O (v:v:v; 3:3:2) (Kiseleva et al, 2021) or MeOH:EtOH (v:v; 1:1) (Szeremeta et al, 2021) are commonly used in metabolomics studies. A choice of proper solvent(s) is important, in the study of Fiehn (2016) it was confirmed that the use of hydrophilic, lipohilic and medium-polarity solvents demonstrated high analytical precision and comprehensiveness of the extracted metabolome.…”