Nontargeted Profiling of Coenzyme A thioesters in biological samples by tandem mass spectrometry
作者:Michael Zimmermann、Verena Thormann、Uwe Sauer、Nicola Zamboni
DOI:10.1021/ac401555n
日期:2013.9.3
Coenzyme A (CoA) thioesters are ubiquitously present in metabolic networks and play a pivotal role in enzymatic formation and cleavage of carbon–carbon bonds. We present a method allowing nontargeted profiling of CoA-thioesters in biological samples. The reported UHPLC-MS/MS approach employes ion-pairing chromatography to separate CoA-metabolites carrying different chemical functionalities such as hydroxyl or multiple carboxyl groups and to distinguish between isomers. Selective detection of CoA-thioesters is accomplished by precursor ion scanning on a triple quadrupole mass spectrometer and takes advantage of the abundant fragment with m/z = −408 that originates from the CoA-moiety. We used a mixture of 19 commercially available CoA-derivatives to develop and optimize our method. As a proof of concept we demonstrated detection of the major CoA-intermediates of branched chain amino acid degradation in biological samples. We then applied our method to investigate degradation of lipids in the microorganism Mycobacterium smegmatis. Profiling of CoA-thioesters led to the discovery of a novel intermediate of cholesterol degradation. This demonstrates the power of our method for untargeted profiling of CoA-thioesters and adds a missing link in mycobacterial cholesterol catabolism.
辅酶A(CoA)硫酯广泛存在于代谢网络中,在酶的形成和碳-碳键的断裂中起着关键作用。我们提出了一种对生物样品中的辅酶A硫酯进行非靶向分析的方法。所报道的UHPLC-MS/MS方法采用离子对色谱法分离具有不同化学功能(如羟基或多个羧基)的辅酶A代谢物,并区分异构体。通过三重四极杆质谱仪上的母离子扫描,利用辅酶A部分产生的m/z = −408的丰富碎片,实现对辅酶A硫酯的选择性检测。我们使用19种市售辅酶A衍生物的混合物来开发和优化我们的方法。作为概念验证,我们证明了在生物样品中检测支链氨基酸降解的主要辅酶A中间体。然后,我们将这种方法应用于研究微生物Mycobacterium smegmatis中脂质的降解。通过对辅酶A硫酯的分析,我们发现了胆固醇降解的一种新型中间体。这证明了我们的方法在辅酶A硫酯的非靶向分析方面的强大功能,并填补了分枝杆菌胆固醇分解代谢中缺失的一环。