Suspect screening of glycoalkaloids in plant extracts using neutral loss - High resolution mass spectrometry.

Alkaloids represent a very large and chemically inhomogeneous group of nitrogen compounds isolated from different natural sources. They have long been studied due to their specific toxicological characteristics, as some of them are suspected of having very dangerous properties, but there has still been little investigation of the existence of possible glycoside precursors in plant products. An analytical method based on a suspect screening approach using liquid chromatography coupled with high resolution tandem mass spectrometry in neutral loss (NL) mode was used for the tentative identification of alkaloid precursors. This NL approach applied to 15 plant extracts made it possible to tentatively identify 41 glycosidic precursors (4 monopentosides, 3 monodeoxyhexosides, 24 monohexosides, 1 pentoside-hexoside and 9 dihexosides) in 6 of them, belonging to the piperidine (21), pyrrolizidine (9), isoquinoline (7), indole (3) and tropane (1) alkaloid groups. This work confirms the promising investigative ability of a suspect screening approach in this complex field of study.