Three-in-One Simultaneous Extraction of Proteins, Metabolites and Lipids for Multi-Omics

Elucidation of complex molecular networks requires integrative analysis of molecular features and changes at different levels of information flow and regulation. Accordingly, high throughput functional genomics tools such as transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and lipidomics have emerged to provide system-wide investigations. Unfortunately, analysis of different types of biomolecules requires specific sample extraction procedures in combination with specific analytical instrumentation. The most efficient extraction protocols often only cover a restricted type of biomolecules due to their different physicochemical properties. Therefore, several sets/aliquots of samples are needed for extracting different molecules. Here we adapted a biphasic fractionation method to extract proteins, metabolites, and lipids from the same sample (3-in-1) for liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) multi-omics. To demonstrate utility of the improved method, we used bacteria-primed Arabidopsis leaves to generate multi-omics datasets from the same sample. In total, we were able to analyze 1849 proteins, 1967 metabolites, and 424 lipid species in single samples. The molecules cover a wide range of biological and molecular processes, and allow quantitative analyses of different molecules and pathways. Our results have shown the clear advantages of the multi-omics method, including sample conservation, high reproducibility, and tight correlation between different types of biomolecules.