Metabolomics profiling using Atmospheric Pressure Gas Chromatography-MS

Gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry is a well-established analytical approach to metabolomics. The most widely used ionization technique is electron ionization (EI), which produces library searchable spectra dominated by fragments. The molecular ion in an EI spectrum is often of very low abundance or absent. The lack of molecular ion information, especially for derivatized compounds, can lead to incorrect identification, if using spectral matching alone. Atmospheric pressure GC (APGC) is a ‘soft‘ chemical ionization technique that generates a spectrum conserving the molecular ion species with minimal fragmentation. Here we explore the use of APGC-MS in metabolomics applications.