Cross-platform metabolic profiling: application to the aquatic model organism Lymnaea stagnalis

The freshwater pond snail Lymnaea stagnalis is used in several studies on molecular and behavioral neurobiology and ecotoxicology showing its successful application as a model organism. In the present study, a cross-platform metabolomic approach has been evaluated to characterize the organ molecular phenotypes of L. stagnalis central nervous system (CNS), digestive gland (DG), and albumen gland (AG). Two types of tissue disruption methods were evaluated of which beads beating was the preferred method. To obtain a broad picture of the hydrophilic and lipophilic metabolome, two complementary analytical platforms have been employed: liquid chromatography (LC) and gas chromatography (GC) coupled to high-resolution mass spectrometry. Furthermore, to increase the power to separate small polar metabolites, hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography (HILIC) was applied. The analytical platform performances have been evaluated based on the metabolome coverage, number of molecular features, reproducibility, and multivariate data analysis (MVDA) clustering. This multiplatform approach is a starting point for future global metabolic profiling applications on L. stagnalis.