A Nontargeted UHPLC-HRMS Metabolomics Pipeline for Metabolite Identification: Application to Cardiac Remote Ischemic Preconditioning

In recent years, the number of investigations based on nontargeted metabolomicshas increased, although often without a thorough assessment of analytical strategies applied to acquire data. Following published guidelines for metabolomicsexperiments, we report a validated nontargeted metabolomicsstrategy with pipeline for unequivocal identification of metabolites using the MSMLSmolecule library. We achieved an in-house database containing accurate m/ z values, retention times, isotopic patterns, full MS, and MS/MS spectra. A UHPLC-HRMS Q-Exactive method was developed, and experimental variations were determined within and between 3 experimental days. The extraction efficiency as well as the accuracy, precision, repeatability, and linearity of the method were assessed, the method demonstrating good performances. The methodology was further blindly applied to plasma from remote ischemic pre-conditioning(RIPC) rats. Samples, previously analyzed by targeted metabolomicsusing completely different protocol, ...