Phospholipidome of extra virgin olive oil: Development of a solid phase extraction protocol followed by liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry for its software-assisted identification

Phospholipidome of extra virgin olive oil: Development of a solid phase extraction protocol followed by liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry for its software-assisted identification

April 2020.

Antonelli M, Benedetti B, Cavaliere C, Cerrato A, Montone CM, Piovesana S, Lagana A, Capriotti AL.

Abstract

The determination of phospholipids in olive oil is challenging due to their low concentration. For this reason, a comparison of two solid phase extraction procedures, namely weak anionic exchange (WAX) and graphitized carbon black (GCB), is presented for the enrichment of phospholipids. Analyses were performed by liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry (LC25 HRMS) and lipids were identified by Lipostar software. Compared to the WAX solid phase extraction, GCB demonstrated the best performance and provided 82 identified phospholipids vs only 32.

The final method was validated for some representative phospholipids, showing good repeatability and recovery (63-101%). High sensitivity was reached, with detection limits in the range 9-36 ng g-1, never reported before for phospholipids in olive oil. A semi-quantitative analysis indicated phosphatidic acids and phosphatidylglycerols as the most abundant species, both in number and concentrations. The GCB-LC-HRMS-Lipostar platform can be successfully applied for a comprehensive polar lipidomic characterization of olive oils.

New insights in hemp chemical composition: a comprehensive polar lipidome characterization by combining solid phase enrichment, high-resolution mass spectrometry, and cheminformatics

New insights in hemp chemical composition: a comprehensive polar lipidome characterization by combining solid phase enrichment, high-resolution mass spectrometry, and cheminformatics

January 2020.

Antonelli M, Benedetti B, Cannazza G, Cerrato A, Citti C, Montone CM, Piovesana

Abstract

The chemical composition of Cannabis sativa L. has been extensively investigated for several years; nevertheless, a detailed lipidome characterization is completely lacking in the literature. To achieve this goal, an extraction and enrichment procedure was developed for the characterization of phospholipids and sulfolipids. Firstly, a study on the solid-liquid extraction was performed, to maximize the recovery of the considered lipids; the best procedure consisted of a simple extraction with a mixture of methanol and chloroform (1:1, v/v).

The hemp extracts were analyzed by ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography coupled to high-resolution mass spectrometry and lipids were tentatively identified by Lipostar. To improve the number of identifications, an enrichment method, based on graphitized carbon black solid phase extraction, was evaluated to fractionate phospholipids and sulfolipids into separate eluates. Recovery and matrix effects of the procedure were determined on a mixture of standard lipids, containing representative compounds for each considered lipid class. The optimized method allowed the tentative identification of 189 lipids, including 51 phospholipids and 80 sulfolipids, in the first and second fractions, respectively. The detection of only 6 sulfolipids in the first fraction and 9 phospholipids in the second fraction proved the efficacy of the fractionation method, which also allowed the number of lipid identifications to be increased compared to the same procedure without enrichment, which scored 100 lipids.

Finally, a semi-quantitative analysis permitted the hemp polar lipidome to be characterized. The results of this study allow knowledge of the hemp chemical composition to be improved with a detailed description of its phospho- and sulfolipid profiles. Graphical abstract.

Degradation studies of dimethachlor in soils and water by UHPLC-HRMS: putative elucidation of unknown metabolites

Degradation studies of dimethachlor in soils and water by UHPLC-HRMS: putative elucidation of unknown metabolites

February 2020.

López-Ruiz R; Romero-González R; Ortega-Carrasco E; Martínez Vidal JL; Garrido Frenich A

Abstract

Background

The analytical control of the presence of dimethachlor and its metabolites in environmental samples, such as water and soils, is a main concern. Degradation of this pesticide has been evaluated in two types of soils and two different water conditions at two concentration levels. For that purpose, a new liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry method has been developed and putative identification of new metabolites has been performed. 

Results

An analytical method based on ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography coupled to Orbitrap mass spectrometry (UHPLC-Orbitrap-MS) was developed to monitor the degradation of dimethachlor in environmental samples (water and soils). The degradation of dimethachlor in soils and groundwater samples has been monitored from 1 to 110 days after application of a plant protection product at two doses. Concentration of the parent compound slowly decreased in both matrices. 

DT50 values ranged from 40 to 70 days. Some metabolites were detected in the commercial product and in the samples one day after the application of the plant protection product. In addition, three new metabolites were putatively identified during dimethachlor degradation by untargeted analysis. 

Conclusions

In this study, the degradation of dimethachlor into its metabolites has been studied in soils and water, using a UHPLC-Orbitrap-MS validated method. A putative elucidation of new metabolites of dimethachlor has been carried out applying HRMS and software tools. Degradation results allowed for understanding the behavior of dimethachlor in soils and water and provided information regarding the possible risk of this pesticide and its metabolites to the ecosystem. 

LipostarMSI: Comprehensive, Vendor-Neutral Software for Visualization, Data Analysis, and Automated Molecular Identification in Mass Spectrometry Imaging

LipostarMSI: Comprehensive, Vendor-Neutral Software for Visualization, Data Analysis, and Automated Molecular Identification in Mass Spectrometry Imaging

January 2020.

Tortorella S, Tiberi P, Bowman AP, Claes BSR, Ščupáková K, Heeren RMA, Ellis SR, Cruciani G. 

Abstract

Mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) visualizes molecular distributions throughout tissues but is blind to dynamic metabolic processes. Here, MSI with high mass resolution together with multiple stable isotope labelling provided spatial analyses of phosphatidylcholine (PC) metabolism in mouse lungs. 

Dysregulated surfactant metabolism is central to many respiratory diseases. Metabolism and turnover of therapeutic pulmonary surfactants were imaged from distributions of intact and metabolic products of an added tracer, universally 13C-labelled dipalmitoyl PC (U13C-DPPC). The parenchymal 

distributions of newly synthesized PC species were also imaged from incorporations of methyl-D9- choline. This dual labelling strategy demonstrated both lack of inhibition of endogenous PC synthesis by exogenous surfactant and location of acyl chain remodeling processes acting on the U13C-DPPClabelled surfactant, leading to formation of polyunsaturated PC lipids. This ability to visualize discrete metabolic events will greatly enhance our understanding of lipid metabolism in diverse tissues and has potential application to both clinical and experimental studies. 

A case study of the MassChemSite Reaction Tracking Workflow: Detecting and identifying byproducts during PROTAC synthesis

A case study of the MassChemSite Reaction Tracking Workflow: Detecting and identifying byproducts during PROTAC synthesis

68th ASMS Conference on Mass Spectrometry and Allied Topics Reboot. Online. June 2020

Abstract

PROTACs are heterobifunctional small molecules composed of a ligand for a protein of interest (POI) and an E3 ligase recruiter connected through a linker.1 Instead of inhibiting the protein functions, PROTACs promote the formation of a ternary complex with POI and E3 ligase, inducing POI poly-ubiquitylation and its successive proteasomal-dependent degradation. 

This appealing technology has already attracted great attention from both academia and industry, and the optimization of PROTACs’ synthetic procedures is now needed. As an example, to automatically find byproducts formed during the synthesis of PROTAC, in this poster we will present the use of the Reaction Tracking workflow included in MassChemsite. This workflow is designed for untargeted multicomponent reactions. 

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