To date, proton 1H nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) is the primary tool in magnetic resonance based metabolomics. This is perhaps unsurprising as the proton not only provides the largest signal of all the NMR visible atomic nuclei but is also ubiquitous in biological molecules. However, using 1H NMR often identifies only 'the usual suspects', those metabolites present in the greatest quantities, and may overlook other important compounds present in much lower concentrations. It is therefore of interest to determine whether alternative biologically significant nuclei such as 13C, 31P or 15N could provide useful information.
While it is far less NMR sensitive than 1H, 13C is widely distributed in biological molecules but while 13C is fairly well used in biological NMR it is rarely used in metabolomics. In contrast, 31P and 15N are not so widely biologically distributed and less NMR sensitive than the proton but more sensitive than 13C. and play a role in several important biological processes, including energy metabolism, and DNA and RNA synthesis.
This work assesses the potential of alternative NMR sensitive nuclei to measure a greater range of metabolites for NMR based metabolomics. Preliminary results suggest that 13C and 31P NMR can provide useful information to metabolomics studies but not 15N. In this talk I will talk about why this might be and discuss our work using alternative nuclei in metabolomics and what the pitfalls and potential gains are for the metabolic scientist working in this area.