Analysis of Sugars in Foods Using Smart Metabolites Database

User Benefits

- 24 types of sugars in foods can be detected from a single peak with no formation of geometric isomers by derivatization. - Approximate concentrations of 24 sugars in food can be calculated simply by pretreating samples with the addition of an internal standard. - The same extraction method and analytical system from the simultaneous analysis of metabolites for metabolomic analysis can be used.

Introduction

The term “sugar” refers collectively to all monosaccharides such as glucose, and all disaccharides such as sucrose that are not sugar alcohols. Plants and animals contain a variety of such sugars, which serve as a source of energy. For metabolomics using a GC-MS system, methoximation- trimethylsilylation (MeOx-TMS) is typically used to derivatize metabolites for simultaneous analysis. However, due to the especially reductive characteristic of sugars, the methoximation process can form chain structures that result in the detection of two types of geometric isomers. This makes quantitative analysis difficult due to inadequate separation between the sugar isomers sorbose and fructose and between the sugar isomers mannose and glucose. Furthermore, plants and animals can contain a large number of sugars with a wide range of concentrations, from a low of 0.1 μg/mg to a high of several hundred μg/mg. Consequently, quantitative analysis of detected sugars can require the preparation of calibration curves with a concentration range that varies depending on the target compound, or consideration of the recovery rates from pretreatment and other factors, which can be very time-consuming. This has led to the need to determine approximate concentration levels. To meet such needs, a semi-quantitative analysis method for sugars is now included in Smart Metabolites Database Ver. 2. This article describes the process of obtaining semi-quantitative values from beef and tomato samples using the sugar analysis method, as well as the results of comparing these semi- quantitative values to quantitative values obtained using the standard addition method.

June 2, 2022 GMT