Marine Metabolomics: a Method for Nontargeted Measurement of Metabolites in Seawater by Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry.

ABSTRACT: Microbial communities exchange molecules with their environment, which plays a major role in regulating global biogeochemical cycles and climate. While extracellular metabolites are commonly measured in terrestrial and limnic ecosystems, the presence of salt in marine habitats limits the nontargeted analyses of the ocean exometabolome using mass spectrometry (MS). Current methods require salt removal prior to sample measurements, which can alter the molecular composition of the metabolome and limit the types of compounds detected by MS. To overcome these limitations, we developed a gas chromatography MS (GC-MS) method that avoids sample altering during salt removal and that detects metabolites down to nanomolar concentrations from less than 1 ml of seawater. We applied our method (SeaMet)

SUBMITTER: Sogin EM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6906741 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature