NMR spectroscopy of biofluids and extracts

Metabonomics-based proton nuclear magnetic resonance ((1)H NMR) spectroscopy is a cross-disciplinary science that overlaps with analytical chemistry, biology, and statistical analysis. Applying (1)H NMR on cell extracts provides a rapid and comprehensive screening of the most abundant metabolites allowing the quantitation of typically 20-70 compounds including amino and organic acids, sugars, amines, nucleosides, phenolic compounds, osmolytes, and lipids produced at sublevel millimolar concentrations. The method is particularly suited for high-throughput analysis (up to 100 samples/24 h), and the powerful structural elucidation of NMR is a great asset for the identification of unknown compounds. This chapter describes procedures for recording metabolite profiles using (1)H NMR, depicts the preprocessing steps leading to data analysis, and presents methods of metabolite identification in spectral profiles of extracts from plants, food, microbes, and mammalian systems.