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Updated: Jul 1, 2025

Using Multi-fluorinated Bile Acids and In Vivo Magnetic Resonance Imaging to Measure Bile Acid Transport
Published on: November 27, 2016
The underappreciated diversity of bile acid modifications
Ipsita Mohanty1, Helena Mannochio-Russo1, Joshua V Schweer2
1Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA.
Abstract:
The repertoire of modifications to bile acids and related steroidal lipids by host and microbial metabolism remains incompletely characterized. To address this knowledge gap, we created a reusable resource of tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) spectra by filtering 1.2 billion publicly available MS/MS spectra for bile-acid-selective ion patterns. Thousands of modifications are distributed throughout animal and human bodies as well as microbial cultures. We employed this MS/MS library to identify polyamine bile amidates, prevalent in carnivores. They are present in humans, and their levels alter with a diet change from a Mediterranean to a typical American diet. This work highlights the existence of many more bile acid modifications than previously recognized and the value of leveraging public large-scale untargeted metabolomics data to discover metabolites. The availability of a modification-centric bile acid MS/MS library will inform future studies investigating bile acid roles in health and disease.
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