Triterpenoid saponins profiling by adducts-targeted neutral loss triggered enhanced resolution and product ion scanning using triple quadrupole linear ion trap mass spectrometry.

Triterpenoid saponins (TSs) are a unique class of high molecular weight glycosides and have been frequently used in cosmetic and phytotherapy industry. There is a great need to comprehensively profile these plant metabolites for studying their functions. In the present study, a novel adducts targeted neutral loss (NL), triggered enhanced resolution (ER) and enhanced product ion (EPI) scanning approach were described for TSs profiling using a triple quadrupole linear ion trap mass spectrometry. This approach circumvented the disadvantages of poor glycosidic bond cleavage of TSs by monitoring the NH3 (NL17) and HCOOH (NL46) loss of their abundant ammonium and formate adducts, respectively. The sugar-loss independent NL scanning served as a sensitive survey scan and triggered information-dependent ER and EPI scans to increase peak assignment confidence. NL17 was superior to NL46 for TSs characterization due to the better fragmentation of ammonium adducts than formate adducts. For those TSs undetectable by NL17, precursor ion (PI) scan for sapogenin fragments could be used to screen out non-adducted TSs. The NL/PI-ER-EPI approach was applied for TSs profiling in Astragali Radix, a famous medicinal and nutritional plant widely used in Asian countries and United States. In total, 136 TSs were detected while previous research using high resolution mass spectrometry based full scan only detected 22 TSs in this herb.