Metabolomics
Contact Persons of the Metabolomics Service:
Organisation: Dr Martin Lehmann martin.lehmann@lmu.de
Technical Assistance: Beate Minov beate.minov@biologie.uni-muenchen.de
Rooms: F02.017 und F02.021
Service
The Service unit MSBioLMU subunit Metabolomics provides routinely GC-MS and LC-MS analyses of small molecules. To this end, the service unit employs several mass spectrometers and chromatographs; two GC-TOF-MS and one UPLC-ESI-QTOF combination. With this equipment pool a broad range of metabolites can be identified and quantified. E.g.: amino acids, organic acids, sugars, fatty acids, glucosinolates, indoles, phenylpropanoides, flavonoides, lipides and porphyrines.
The service includes sample measurements, advisory service in experimental design and data exploration. To analyse the data, several software tools and mass spectral libraries are used.
Sample Preparation
Before sending any samples, establish contacts to the service unit to check the machine run time capacity and confirm the correct receipt of your samples. To ensure the degree of purity required for all consumables the sample preparation will be done exclusively in our laboratories. Methods of extraction will be adapted to the customer needs.
- Ask the service unit for help in experimental design, if necessary.
- Prepare at least 5 biological replicates (5 mg dry weight or 50 mg fresh weight, some extra material for testing is welcome)
- Always use the highest grade reagents and consumables available.
- Wear clean and powder-free gloves and avoid skin contact.
- Harvest fast as possible! The metabolism needs to be stopped immediately by freezing in liquid nitrogen (solid sample) or adding ice cold methanol (liquid sample). Ask the MSBioLMU support in advance. If necessary lyophilise the sample. Ask in advance!
- Store the sample at -80°C.
- Send the samples on dry ice or lyophilised only.
- Contact the MSBioLMU before sending any samples to ensure correct receipt.
- Fill out the Sample Submission Form and submit it together with your sample (rooms F02.17 or F02.021)
- Please consider the MSBioLMU in acknowledgements.
Data Exploration
GC-MS data sets are evaluated using device-specific programs, as well as, the TagFinder software tool. The TagFinder employs spectra and retention time indices (RI) of the Golm Metabolom Database (GMD) for metabolite identification. LC-ESI-QTOF-MS data sets are evaluated by MassLynx V4.1 and further freeware tools.
Technical Equipment
GC-MS
The service unit has two Pegasus HT GC-TOF-MS (Leco) equiped with an autosampler (automated derivatisation/injection) to perform gas chromatography. This ensures a high comparability of the derivatisation process combined with minimised time offset between sample preparation and measurement. Furthermore, both GC machines have two different injection ports to enable hot and cold injection. A 30 m VF-5 ms column + 10 m guard column (Agilent Technologies) is routinely used.
LC-MS
LC analyses are performend on a UPLC-QTOF combination (Premier, Waters). The QTOF has an ESI source and different types of columns are available.
Costs
Information on pricing and user conditions is provided here.
Downloads
Sample Submission Form: Metabolomics (19 KByte)