Simultaneous, untargeted metabolic profiling of polar and nonpolar metabolites by LC-Q-TOF mass spectrometry.

At its most ambitious, untargeted metabolomics aims to characterize and quantify all of the metabolites in a given system. Metabolites are often present at a broad range of concentrations and possess diverse physical properties complicating this task. Performing multiple sample extractions, concentrating sample extracts, and using several separation and detection methods are common strategies to overcome these challenges but require a great amount of resources. This protocol describes the untargeted, metabolic profiling of polar and nonpolar metabolites with a single extraction and using a single analytical platform.