Ultrafast Polyphenol Metabolomics of Red Wines Using MicroLC-MS/MS

The taste and quality of red wine
are determined by its highly
complex mixture of polyphenols and many other metabolites. No single
method can fully cover the full metabolome, but even for polyphenols
and related compounds, current methods proved inadequate. We optimized
liquid chromatography resolution and sensitivity using 1 mm i.d. columns
with microLC pumps and compared data-dependent to data-independent
(SWATH) MS/MS acquisitions. A high-throughput microLC-MS method was
developed with a 4 min gradient at 0.05 mL/min flow rate on a Kinetex
C18 column and Sciex TripleTOF mass spectrometry. Using the novel
software MS-DIAL, we structurally annotated 264 compounds including
165 polyphenols in six commercial red wines by accurate mass MS/MS
matching. As proof of concept, multivariate statistics revealed the
difference in the metabolite profiles of the six red wines, and regression
analysis linked the polyphenol contents to the taste of the red wines.