Applications of Separation Techniques Hyphenated to Mass Spectrometer for Metabolic Profiling

In the last two decades sensitive physico-chemical methods enabling analyses of natural products mixtures (secondary metabolites and biopolymers) have been developed. Hyphenation of chromatograhic techniques with different types of mass spectrometers is one of the most effective analytical methods for identification and structural studies of compounds demonstrating different physico-chemical properties and wide range of molecular masses. Various types of chromatography for separation, as well as mass spectrometers equipped with different analyzers and ionization sources are in common use. Chromatographic techniques suitable for separation of unpolar or highly polar compounds are combined with mass spectrometers, the achievable instrumentation assures high sensitivity of analyses, in some circumstances, even on attomole level. The possibilities for investigations on different classes of natural products, present in complicated mixtures obtained from biological sources, so called metabolic profiling, may be considered as complementary studies in many fields of biochemical and medical sciences. This information complement data obtained during research conducted on animal and (slash) or plant genome and proteome projects.