Use of coupled ion mobility spectrometry-time of flight mass spectrometry to analyze saturated and unsaturated phenylpropanoic acids and chalcones

Advances of Ion Mobility Platform for Plant Metabolomics

Metabolomics aims to profile the extensive array of metabolites that exists in different types of matrices using modern analytical techniques. These techniques help to separate, identify, and quantify the plethora of chemical compounds at various analytical platforms. Hence, ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) has emerged as an advanced analytical approach, exclusively owing to the 3D separation of metabolites and their isomers. Furthermore, separated metabolites are identified based on their mass fragmentation pattern and CCS (collision cross-section) values. The IMS provides an advanced alternative dimension to separate the isomeric metabolites with enhanced throughput with lesser chemical noise. Thus, the present review highlights the types, factors affecting the resolution, and applications of IMMS (Ion mobility mass spectrometry) for isomeric separations, and ionic contaminants in the plant samples. Furthermore, an overview of IMS-based applications for the identification of plant metabolites (volatile and non-volatile) over the last few decades has been discussed, followed by future assumptions for creating IM-based databases. Such approaches could be significant to accelerate and improve our knowledge of the vast chemical diversity found in plants.

Biological activity and chemical characterization of Pouteria lucuma seeds: A possible use of an agricultural waste

Pouteria lucuma fruit is widely used to prepare cakes, ice creams and juice or also commercialized as pulp and flour. As result of this business thousands of tons of seeds are generated as an agricultural waste. This study presents the antioxidant and antiulcer activities, and the identification of secondary metabolites by UHPLC/ESI/MS/MS of an agroindustrial waste of Pouteria lucuma seeds. Fifty-nine compounds were tentatively identified including eight aminoacids, five organic acids, one nucleoside, five phenolic acids, five phenolic alcohols, nineteen flavonoids, six lipids, and seven unknowns in the methanol extract of P. lucuma seeds. The total phenolic content of the seeds was 52.82 ± 0.09 μmol GAE/g dry weight, while total flavonoid content was 5.99 ± 0.01 μmol Q/g dry weight. The antioxidant activity was 58.14 ± 0.05, 66.97 ± 0.00, 272.50 ± 0.00, and 67.02 ± 2.23 for the DPPH, ABTS, FRAP, and superoxide anion assays, respectively. The highest gastroprotective activity was obtained at 100 mg/kg (78%), which as higher than the positive control lansoprazole (75%). Our findings showed that P. lucuma seed extracts have moderate to high antioxidant activity and gastroprotective properties. Therefore, it was demostrated that lucuma seeds commonly eliminated as an agricultural industry waste, could be useful for the preparation of nutritional supplements.