5-Diethylamino-naphthalene-1-sulfonyl chloride (DensCl): a novel triplex isotope labeling reagent for quantitative metabolome analysis by liquid chromatography mass spectrometry.

We describe a new set of isotope reagents, (12)C4-, (12)C2(13)C2-, and (13)C4-5-diethylamino-naphthalene-1-sulfonyl chloride (DensCl), in combination with liquid chromatography Fourier-transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (LC-FTICR-MS), for improved analysis of the amine- and phenol-containing submetabolome. The synthesis of the reagents is reported, and an optimized derivatization protocol for labeling amines and phenols is described. To demonstrate the utility of the triplex reagents for metabolome profiling of biological samples, urine samples collected daily from a healthy volunteer over a period of 14 days were analyzed. The overall workflow is straightforward, including differential isotope labeling of individual samples and a pooled sample that serves a global internal standard, mixing of the isotope differentially labeled samples and LC-MS analysis for relative metabolome quantification. Comparing to the dansyl chloride (DnsCl) duplex isotope reagents, the new triplex DensCl reagents offer the advantages of improved metabolite detectability due to enhanced sensitivity (i.e., about 1000 peak pairs detected by DensCl labeling vs about 600 peak pairs detected by DnsCl labeling) and analysis speed (i.e., simultaneous analysis of two comparative samples by DensCl vs only one comparative sample analyzed by DnsCl).