Rapid and Economical Chemoselective Metabolomics Using Boronate Ester Formation on a Monolithic Substrate

Although chemoselective labeling strategies show great potential in in-depth description of metabolomics, the associated time and expense limit applications in high-throughput and routine analysis. We report a fast and effective chemoselective labeling strategy based on multifunctionalized monolithic probes. A rapid pH-responsive boronate ester reaction was employed to immobilize and release probe molecules from substrate in 5 min. The mesoporous surface and hierarchically porous channels of the substrate allowed for accelerated labeling reactions. Moreover, the discernible boron beacons allowed for recognition of labeled metabolites with no need for expensive isotopic encoding. This new strategy has been successfully used for submetabolome analysis of yeast cells, serum, and faeces samples, with improved sensitivity for short chain fatty acids up to 1 600 times compared with non-labeled liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) methods.