A liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry-based metabolome database for tomato

Area of Science:

• Plant metabolomics
• Biochemical analysis
• Database development

Background:

• Metabolite databases are crucial for organismal metabolome description.
• Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) fruit metabolomics requires comprehensive data resources.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop the Metabolome Tomato Database (MoTo DB) for tomato fruit.
• To establish a reproducible analytical method for tomato metabolomics.

Main Methods:

• Reversed-phase liquid chromatography-quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (LC-MS) with photodiode array detection (PDA).
• Software-based processing for mass signal extraction, alignment, and accurate mass calculation.
• Compound identification using literature data, PDA, MS/MS fragmentation, and reference standards.

Main Results:

• Developed a robust LC-PDA-quadrupole time-of-flight MS platform for semipolar metabolites.
• Identified novel compounds in tomato fruit and incorporated data into MoTo DB.
• MoTo DB includes retention times, accurate masses, PDA spectra, MS/MS fragments, and references.
• Metabolic profiling revealed tissue-specific distribution of compounds (e.g., flavonoids in peel, alkaloids in flesh).

Conclusions:

• MoTo DB provides a valuable resource for tomato metabolomics research.
• The established analytical approach enables large-scale metabolite detection and identification.
• Tissue-specific metabolic profiling highlights the database's utility in comparative studies.