Detection Of Small Metabolites In Biological Samples Using Laser Desorption/ionization Mass Spectrometry

Laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry(LDI MS)-based small metabolites detection is fundamentally important for the clinic prognoses and diagnoses.In LDI MS,organic or inorganic materials as matrices are generally needed to improve the detection efficiency and enable soft ionization to measure the exact whole molecular mass of analytes.However,the use of organic matrices produced strong background signals in the low mass range(m/z<500)and caused high spot-to-spot variations to the "sweet spot" effect.Thus,exploitation of new functions of known nanomaterials as LDI MS matrices is one of the most attractive aspects in nanoscience.In this work,we report the employment of nanoparticles as novel matrices for enhanced LDI MS detection of small analytes in various kinds of biological samples.Owing to the desirable structural parameters and efficient laser desorption/ionization performance of these nanoparticles,we designed some novel projects.Firstly,we reported sensitive LDI MS detection of small nutrients in milk sample.Our method offers high sensitivity ~pmol,low sample consumption down to 10 nL and facile sample preparation for practical use.This work makes solid contributions to minimisation of biobank and easy sample treatment in clinics towards advanced nutrition study.Further,for the first time we reported the enhancement mechanism of LDI MS detection using plasmonic nanoparticles with hot carriers and achieved profiling and detection of small metabolites from complex serum samples.Our work not only shed light on the LDI MS-based small metabolites detection,but also contributed to the real case application of LDI MS in clinical study.