Metabolite profiling of plastidial deoxyxylulose-5-phosphate pathway intermediates by liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry.

Metabolite profiling is a powerful tool that enhances our understanding of complex regulatory processes and extends to the comparative analysis of plant gene function. However, at present, there are relatively few examples of metabolite profiling being used to characterize the regulatory aspects of the plastidial deoxyxylulose-5-phosphate (DXP) pathway in plants. Since the DXP pathway is one of two pathways in plants that are essential for isoprenoid biosynthesis, it is imperative that robust analytical methods be employed for the characterization of this metabolic pathway. Recently, liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS), in conjunction with traditional molecular biology approaches, established that the DXP pathway metabolite, methylerythritol cyclodiphosphate (MEcPP), previously known solely as an intermediate in the isoprenoid biosynthetic pathway, is a stress sensor that communicates environmental perturbations sensed by plastids to the nucleus, a process referred to as retrograde signaling. In this chapter, we describe two LC-MS methods from this study that can be broadly used to characterize DXP pathway intermediates.