Targeted liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry to quantitate wheat gluten using well-defined reference proteins

PLoS One. 2018 Feb 9;13(2):e0192804. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0192804. eCollection 2018.

Abstract

Celiac disease (CD) is an inflammatory disorder of the upper small intestine caused by the ingestion of storage proteins (prolamins and glutelins) from wheat, barley, rye, and, in rare cases, oats. CD patients need to follow a gluten-free diet by consuming gluten-free products with gluten contents of less than 20 mg/kg. Currently, the recommended method for the quantitative determination of gluten is an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) based on the R5 monoclonal antibody. Because the R5 ELISA mostly detects the prolamin fraction of gluten, a new independent method is required to detect prolamins as well as glutelins. This paper presents the development of a method to quantitate 16 wheat marker peptides derived from all wheat gluten protein types by liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) in the multiple reaction monitoring mode. The quantitation of each marker peptide in the chymotryptic digest of a defined amount of the respective reference wheat protein type resulted in peptide-specific yields. This enabled the conversion of peptide into protein type concentrations. Gluten contents were expressed as sum of all determined protein type concentrations. This new method was applied to quantitate gluten in wheat starches and compared to R5 ELISA and gel-permeation high-performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection (GP-HPLC-FLD), which resulted in a strong correlation between LC-MS/MS and the other two methods.

Publication types

  • Comparative Study
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Antibodies, Monoclonal / analysis
  • Calibration
  • Chromatography, Liquid* / methods
  • Edible Grain / chemistry
  • Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay
  • Flour / analysis*
  • Food Analysis / methods*
  • Glutens / analysis*
  • Tandem Mass Spectrometry* / methods
  • Triticum / chemistry*

Substances

  • Antibodies, Monoclonal
  • Glutens

Grants and funding

Peter Koehler acknowledges funding by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research via the VDI Technologiezentrum GmbH (Grant No. 13GW0042). The publication of this article was funded by the Open Access Fund of the Leibniz Association. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.