Metabolomics by GC-MS

[vellaikumar]

Dear Members,

Can some one explain me how to do metabolomics study on crude plant extracts with GC-MS. I am using Perkin Elmer Clarus 500 GC-MS system. Is there any suitable software required for this type of study or still can use normal GC-MS software.

Regards

[BillW]

It depends what you mean by "metabolomics", and what the goal of the experiment is. For a targeted, or semi-targeted study, the vendor software should be sufficient. For a general metabolomics approach, specific software in addition to vendor software is probably necessary.
For GC/MS deconvolution for metabolomics, the program AMDIS, developed at NIST, is pretty much the standard for data analysis.
http://chemdata.nist.gov/mass-spc/amdis/

You can look at the publications of T. Moritz and O. Fiehn, both of whom use GC/MS as their primary tool for metabolomics. Although they are using a GC-TOF, a quad should be sufficient for most purposes.

It is certainly worth considering an LC/MS approach to metabolomics in combination to the GC/MS approach.

Bill Wikoff