Monitoring dynamic changes in lymph metabolome of fasting and fed rats by electrospray ionization-ion mobility mass spectrometry (ESI-IMMS).

Ambient pressure ion mobility time-of-flight mass spectrometry (IMMS) has recently emerged as a rapid and efficient analytical technique for applications to metabolomics. An important application of metabolomics is to monitor metabolome shifts caused by stress due to toxin exposure, nutritional changes, or disease. The research presented in this paper uses IMMS to monitor metabolic changes in rat lymph fluid caused by dietary stresses over time. Extracts of metabolites found in the lymph fluid collected from dietary stressed rats were subjected to analysis by electrospray (ESI) IMMS operated both in positive and negative ion detection mode. Metabolites detected were tentatively identified based on their mass to charge ratio (m/z). In one sample, 1180 reproducible tentative metabolite ions were detected in negative mode and 1900 reproducible tentative metabolite ions detected in positive mode. Only biologically reproducible ions, defined as metabolite ions that were measured in different rats under the same treatment, were analyzed to reduce the complexity of the data. A metabolite peak list including m/z, mobility, and intensity generated for each metabolome was used to perform principle component analysis (PCA). Dynamic changes in metabolomes were investigated using principle components PC1 and PC2 that described 62% of the variation of the system in positive mode and 81% of the variation of the system in negative mode. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed for PC1 and PC2 and means were statistically evaluated. Profiles of intensities were compared for tentative metabolite ions detected at different times before and after the rats were fed to identify the metabolites that were changing the most. Mobility-mass correlation curves (MMCC) were investigated for the different classes of compounds.