Ângelo C. Salvador
University of Aveiro, Portugal
Title: GC×GC-TOFMS-based metabolomics as an approach to study the influence of elderberries (sambucus nigra) ripening and cultivar
Biography
Biography: Ângelo C. Salvador
Abstract
Great challenges on analytical chemistry and mass spectrometry were faced with the expansion of plant metabolomics due to the metabolites complexity. Volatile terpenic (C10 and C15) and norisoprenoid (mainly C13) metabolites, in particular, have similar structural backbones being the MS analysis often difficult. GC-MS is commonly used to analyse these compounds but the demands of plant complexity frequently overwhelm the capacity of 1D separation processes, leading to chromatographic co-elutions and limiting reliable MS identifications. Thus, this work presents a GC×GC-ToFMS-based plant metabolomics approach that explores the effects of ripening and cultivar on elderberries volatile terpenic and norisoprenoid metabolites. GC×GC-ToFMS was selected due to its high resolution and sensitivity being attained by employing an orthogonal separation mechanism (volatility and polarity). Further, ToFMS analyzer granted a high spectral resolution with narrow peaks (milliseconds) and spectral acquisition rates (100Hz). The structured chromatogram (compounds structurally related were positioned on similar chromatographic spaces) combined with the ion extraction chromatography increased the method specificity and sensitivity, helped to eliminate hundreds of non-target metabolites and classify unknown compounds. Sixty-six metabolites were identified being 48 reported for the first time as elderberries components. By employing chemometric tools it was observed that ripening was the variability main factor (39.8%), followed by cultivar (10.3%).