An Adductomic Approach to Identify Electrophiles In Vivo

Human beings are exposed to many reactive electrophiles, both formed endogenously and from exogenous exposures. Such compounds could react with cellular biomolecules and form stable reaction products, adducts, at nucleophilic sites in proteins and DNA, constituting a risk for toxic effects. Adductomic approaches aim to study the totality of adducts, to specific biomolecules, by mass spectrometric screening. This Mini-Review focuses on the development and application of an adductomic approach for the screening of unknown adducts to N-terminal valine (Val) in haemoglobin (Hb) by liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). The approach is based on the FIRE procedure, a modified Edman procedure for the analysis of adducts to N-terminal Val in Hb by LC-MS/MS. In the first application of the approach, samples from 12 smokers/non-smokers were screened for Hb adducts, and six previously identified adducts and 20 unknown adducts were detected. To confirm the observation of the detected unknown adducts, targeted screenings were performed in larger sets of blood samples (n = 50-120) from human cohorts. The majority of the previously detected unknown adducts was found in all analysed samples, with large interindividual variations in adduct levels. For structural identification of unknown adducts, a strategy using adductome LC-MS/MS data was formulated and applied. Six identified adducts correspond to ethylation and the precursor electrophiles ethyl vinyl ketone, glyoxal, methylglyoxal, acrylic acid and 1-octen-3-one. The observation of these adducts in human blood motivate further studies to evaluate possible contributions to health risks, as well as their potential as biomarkers of exposure.