High-resolution tandem mass spectrometer with liquid chromatography (UHPLC-QTOF-MS)

• Subject Area: Plant Sciences
• Term: Funded in 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 495720893

The proposed high-resolution hybrid mass spectrometer is a replacement for the existing UHPLC-QTOF-MS system for non-targeted metabolome analysis, so-called metabolite fingerprinting. The instrument is operated by the service unit Metabolome and Lipidome Analysis of the Department of Plant Biochemistry at the Göttingen Center for Molecular Biosciences (GZMB). The service unit provides a comprehensive infrastructure for the analysis of small molecules to the departments of the GZMB, the Georg-August-University, but also to external academic cooperation partners and offers targeted and non-targeted approaches. Undirected metabolome analysis provides a comprehensive view of the metabolic state of an organism after biotic or abiotic stress or as a consequence of genetic or developmental changes. In this context, metabolite fingerprinting allows the identification and characterization of metabolic markers or pathways that are functionally related to the corresponding influencing factors due to the large depth of analysis. The results of the undirected metabolome analysis have also proven to be very valuable for generating working hypotheses and developing new scientific questions. The proposed high-resolution hybrid mass spectrometer will also be used to further develop our ex vivo metabolomics approach for functional annotation of enzymes. This hypothesis-free approach combines protein biochemistry and metabolite fingerprinting to identify substrate-product pairs for uncharacterized enzymes to describe their physiological functions. In addition, we plan to use the new UHPLC-QTOF-MS system to expand our expertise in lipidome analysis by establishing a platform for non-targeted lipidome analysis. This will complement the existing method for targeted analysis and enable the identification of previously unknown lipid markers.The replacement of the UHPLC-QTOF-MS system will enable us to further develop sophisticated methods for non-targeted metabolome and lipidome analysis and make them available to the scientific community.

• DFG Programme: Major Research Instrumentation
• Major Instrumentation: Hochauflösendes Tandem-Massenspektrometer mit Flüssigkeitschromatographie (UHPLC-QTOF-MS)
• Instrumentation Group: 1700 Massenspektrometer
• Applicant Institution: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
• Leader: Professor Dr. Ivo Feußner