Let your metabolites shine: new NMR experiments and hardware for enhanced studies of metabolites

"Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) is increasingly applied in studies of metabolites because it is arguably one of the most powerful methods for obtaining structural and dynamic information in complex mixtures. Comprehensively monitoring the patterns of metabolites can be useful to both the analysis of underlying metabolite networks (e.g. the responses to the changing environment or the presence of stress, pest or disease) and as metabolite fingerprinting approaches (e.g., to confirm a food product's authenticity or to demonstrate lack of potentially toxic adulteration [1]). One exciting possibility to further improve the value of NMR-based metabolomics - which is still lacking sensitivity compared to conventional mass spectrometry approaches - is to take advantage of photo-chemically induced dynamic nuclear polarisation (photo-CIDNP [2]), where observed NMR signal intensities of aromatic compounds in the presence of a photosensitiser are modulated and often significantly increased upon illumination. We recently proposed and patented the new way of illuminating NMR samples in situ using LEDs (NMRtorch approach [3,4]), leading to photo-CIDNP enhancements exceeding those obtained using lasers, while allowing for potentially much higher sample throughput, and even automation.
The aim of the proposed project is to explore the use of photo-CIDNP for studies of aromatic metabolites, initially for the purpose of fingerprinting and authentication of plant-based liquid food products, such as grape juice or wine, and then extending it to other metabolomics systems such as biological fluids, for example for identifying and monitoring metabolite biomarkers associated with health and disease. "