Online Liquid Chromatography-Sheath-Flow Surface Enhanced Raman Detection of Phosphorylated Carbohydrates

Online detection and quantification of three phosphorylated carbohydrate molecules: glucose 1-phosphate, glucose 6-phosphate, and fructose 6-phosphate was achieved by coupling sheath-flow surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) to liquid chromatography. The presence of an alkanethiol (hexanethiol) self-assembled monolayer adsorbed to a silver SERS-active substrate helps retain and concentrate the analytes of interest at the SERS substrate to improve the detection sensitivity significantly. Mixtures of 2 μM of phosphorylated carbohydrates in pure water as well as in cell culture media were successfully separated by HPLC, with identification using the sheath-flow SERS detector. The quantification of each analyte was achieved using partial least-squares (PLS) regression analysis and acetonitrile in the mobile phases as an internal standard. These results illustrate the utility of sheath-flow SERS for molecular specific detection in complex biological samples appropriate for metabolomics and other applications.