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Updated: May 25, 2026

Untargeted Metabolomics from Biological Sources Using Ultraperformance Liquid Chromatography-High Resolution Mass Spectrometry (UPLC-HRMS)
Published on: May 20, 2013
Porphyrinogen fragmentation profiles by ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography/electrospray ionisation tandem
Christopher M Benton1, Chang Kee Lim, Caje Moniz
1Clinical Biochemistry, King's College Hospital, Denmark Hill, London, SE5 9RS, UK.
Abstract:
An ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography/electrospray ionisation tandem mass spectrometry system is described for the separation and characterisation of uroporphyrinogen, heptacarboxylic acid porphyrinogen, hexacarboxylic acid porphyrinogen, pentacarboxylic acid porphyrinogen and coproporphyrinogen. The separation was carried out on a 100 mm × 2.1 mm Thermo-Hypersil BDS column (2.4 µm average particle size) by gradient elution with a mixture of acetonitrile, methanol and 1 mol/L aqueous ammonium acetate buffer, pH 5.16, as eluent. The fragmentation pattern of each compound was established by collision-induced dissociation tandem mass spectrometry. The most characteristic fragmentation was ring opening at one of the four methylene bridges of the protonated porphyrinogen molecule followed by further cleavages of methylene bridges linking the four pyrrole rings at various points to give product ions with methylenepyrrolenine, methylene-dipyrrolenine and methylene-tripyrrolenine structures.
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