A rough guide to metabolite identification using high resolution liquid chromatography mass spectrometry in metabolomic profiling in metazoans

Compound identification in mass spectrometry based metabolomics can be a problem but sometimes the problem seems to be presented in an over complicated way. The current review focuses on metazoans where the range of metabolites is more restricted than for example in plants. The focus is on liquid chromatography with high resolution mass spectrometry where it is proposed that most of the problems in compound identification relate to structural isomers rather than to isobaric compounds. Thus many of the problems faced relate to separation of isomers, which is usually required even if fragmentation is used to support structural identification. Many papers report the use of MS/MS or MS(2) as an adjunct to the identification of known metabolites but there a few examples in metabolomics studies of metazoans of complete structure elucidation of novel metabolites or metabolites where no authentic standards are available for comparison.