Mass spectrometry (MS) driven metabolomics is a frequently used tool in various areas of life sciences; however, the analysis of polar metabolites is less commonly included. In general, metabolomic analyses lead to the detection of the total amount of all covered metabolites. This is currently a major limitation with respect to metabolites showing high turnover rates, but no changes in their concentration. Such metabolites and pathways could be crucial metabolic nodes (e.g., potential drug targets in cancer metabolism). A stable-isotope tracing capillary electrophoresis-mass spectrometry (CE-MS) metabolomic approach was developed to cover both polar metabolites and isotopologues in a non-targeted way. An in-house developed software enables high throughput processing of complex multidimensional data. The practicability is demonstrated analyzing [U-13 C]-glucose exposed prostate cancer and non-cancer cells. This CE-MS-driven analytical strategy complements polar metabolite profiles through isotopologue labeling patterns, thereby improving not only the metabolomic coverage, but also the understanding of metabolism.
Keywords: capillary electrophoresis; isotopologues; mass spectrometry; metabolism; metabolomics.
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