This is especially problematic for complex biological samples such as extracellular culture media and body fluids, which contain large amounts of non-derivatizable compounds that may damage a capillary GC column. Figure 1.

Overall scheme of chemical derivatization of metabolites by silylation using trimethylsilyl derivatives, e.g. N-methyl-N-(trimethylsilyl)trifluoroacetamide (MSTFA). The formation of derivatives from MSTFA involves the displacement of an selleck chemical N-methyltrifluoroacetamide … Alkylation is an alternative derivatization reaction that can be used in metabolite analysis by GC and GC-MS [1,2,10-12]. This method is primarily used for derivatization of polyfunctional Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical amines and organic acids, and a novel alkylation protocol based on methyl chloroformate (MCF) derivatives has been Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical reported that enables the GC-MS analysis of over a hundred amino and non-amino organic acids simultaneously (Figure 2) [13-15]. Of the 600 metabolites documented by Förster et al. [16] in a genome-wide

metabolic model for yeast, approximately 40% are amines, amino acids or organic acids (not including fatty acids), which play crucial roles in central carbon metabolism and amino acid biosynthesis. Unlike silylation, the alkylation derivatization offers instantaneous reaction without heating or water exclusion, lower reagent costs, and easy separation of the derivatives Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical from the reaction mixture, which causes less damage to the GC-capillary column. Therefore, MCF derivatization is the best candidate to

be used in parallel with silylation in order to achieve the goal of metabolomics that is the detection and analysis of as many metabolites as possible in biological samples. Figure 2. Overall scheme Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical of chemical derivatization of metabolites by alkylation using methyl chloroformate (MCF). Mainly amino and non-amino organic acids are derivatized by this technique, but some amines and alcohols can also be derivatized as shown below. In this work, we report a comparative study on the analytical performance of the most popular silylation Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical SB-3CT reaction (methoxymation followed by per-trimethylsilylation – referred hereafter as TMS) and the previously reported alkylation protocol based on MCF derivatization for the simultaneous analysis of amino and non-amino organic acids as well as nucleotides. We compare here the stability of the derivatives, the reproducibility of derivatization, the dynamic range of detection, linearity, matrix effect of both derivatization methods, as well as the performance of both methods during analysis of microbial-derived metabolites in culture media using a standard GC-MS platform. Experimental Chemicals Methanol, sodium hydroxide, chloroform and sodium sulfate used for chemical derivatization were all of analytical grade and purchased from different suppliers.