Advances of Ion Mobility Platform for Plant Metabolomics

Abstract

Metabolomics aims to profile the extensive array of metabolites that exists in different types of matrices using modern analytical techniques. These techniques help to separate, identify, and quantify the plethora of chemical compounds at various analytical platforms. Hence, ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) has emerged as an advanced analytical approach, exclusively owing to the 3D separation of metabolites and their isomers. Furthermore, separated metabolites are identified based on their mass fragmentation pattern and CCS (collision cross-section) values. The IMS provides an advanced alternative dimension to separate the isomeric metabolites with enhanced throughput with lesser chemical noise. Thus, the present review highlights the types, factors affecting the resolution, and applications of IMMS (Ion mobility mass spectrometry) for isomeric separations, and ionic contaminants in the plant samples. Furthermore, an overview of IMS-based applications for the identification of plant metabolites (volatile and non-volatile) over the last few decades has been discussed, followed by future assumptions for creating IM-based databases. Such approaches could be significant to accelerate and improve our knowledge of the vast chemical diversity found in plants.

Keywords:

• Collision cross-section
• drift tubes
• ion mobility
• plants
• metabolites
• metabolomics

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the Director, CSIR-Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology (CSIR-IHBT), Palampur, India for providing the necessary facilities.

Conflict of interest

The authors declared no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, India, and projects no. MLP0201 and MLP 0203.