Stable isotopic labelling-assisted untargeted metabolic profiling reveals novel conjugates of the mycotoxin deoxynivalenol in wheat

Anal Bioanal Chem. 2013 Jun;405(15):5031-6. doi: 10.1007/s00216-012-6483-8. Epub 2012 Oct 20.

Abstract

An untargeted screening strategy for the detection of biotransformation products of xenobiotics using stable isotopic labelling (SIL) and liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS) is reported. The organism of interest is treated with a mixture of labelled and non-labelled precursor and samples are analysed by LC-HRMS. Raw data are processed with the recently developed MetExtract software for the automated extraction of corresponding peak pairs. The SIL-assisted approach is exemplified by the metabolisation of the Fusarium mycotoxin deoxynivalenol (DON) in planta. Flowering ears were inoculated with 100 μg of a 1 + 1 (v/v) mixture of non-labelled and fully labelled DON. Subsequent sample preparation, LC-HRMS measurements and data processing revealed a total of 57 corresponding peak pairs, which originated from ten metabolites. Besides the known DON and DON-3-glucoside, which were confirmed by measurement of authentic standards, eight further DON-biotransformation products were found by the untargeted screening approach. Based on a mass deviation of less than ±5 ppm and MS/MS measurements, one of these products was annotated as DON-glutathione (GSH) conjugate, which is described here for the first time for wheat. Our data further suggest that two DON-GSH-related metabolites, the processing products DON-S-cysteine and DON-S-cysteinyl-glycine and five unknown DON conjugates were formed in planta. Future MS/MS measurements shall reveal the molecular structures of the detected conjugates in more detail.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Chromatography, Liquid / methods
  • Fusarium / metabolism
  • Isotope Labeling / methods*
  • Metabolomics / methods*
  • Molecular Structure
  • Tandem Mass Spectrometry / methods
  • Trichothecenes / chemistry*
  • Trichothecenes / metabolism*
  • Triticum / chemistry
  • Triticum / microbiology*

Substances

  • Trichothecenes
  • deoxynivalenol