Metabolomics Analysis

A metabolomic analysis combines a number of steps from tissue extraction through the detection and measurement of metabolites to analysis, interpretation and visualization of the results.

All steps may be either untargeted or more targeted, the choice depending on the analytical/biological questions posed and various other factors, including the classes, stability and other properties of metabolites of interest, whether or not the samples need to be purified, detection limits and required analytical accuracy.

More than 2000 putative metabolites can be detected using a combination of analytical techniques such combined gas chromatography – mass spectrometry (GC-MS) or liquid chromatography – mass spectrometry (LC-MS, LC-MSMS). However, only a fraction of the detected compounds will be annotated. The annotation is based on our in-house mass spectra libraries (GC-MS and LC-MSMS), as well as commercial and freely available libraries.

Depending on research question, we use one or several methods for analyzing the metabolome.

The below figure shows an example of a chromatogram from LC-MS based metabolomics analysis, with both annotated and non-annotated compounds.

The last figure shows an example of a tandem mass spectrum for decanoylcarnitine (from analysis of plasma with LC-QTOF-MSMS).