Fast and sensitive flow-injection mass spectrometry metabolomics by analyzing sample-specific ion distributions

• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-17026-6
• Publication Date: 2020-06-24T10:02:52Z
• Authors: Boris Sarvin; Shoval Lagziel; Nikita Sarvin; Dzmitry Mukha; Praveen Kumar; Elina Aizenshtein; Tomer Shlomi
• Keywords: Orbitrap; Biomarker Discovery

Mass spectrometry based metabolomics is a widely used approach in biomedical research. However, current methods coupling mass with chromatography are time-consuming and not suitable for high-throughput analysis of thousands samples. An alternative flow-injection (FI-MS) which samples directly injected to the ionization source. Here, we show that sensitivity Orbitrap FI-MS limited by ion competition effect. We describe an overcoming this effect analyzing distribution m/z values computationally determining series optimal scan ranges. This enables reproducible detection ~9,000 ~10,000 features lipidomics serum samples, respectively, sample time ~15 s duty ~30 s; ~50% increase versus spectral-stitching FI-MS. facilitates variety applications, including biomarker discovery functional genomics screens.