Metabolite identification implementation

Besides, High Resolution/Accurate Mass TOF and Q-TOF spectrometers (Figure 4b) allow full detection at low ppb amounts of drugs and their known and unknown metabolites, and they are fully implemented in Life Science applications like Metabolites Identification (MetID), and Drug Discovery. 

In our laboratory, for the screening of crude plant extracts, HPLC coupled with UV photodiode array detection (LCAJV-DAD) and mass spectrometry (LC/MS) has been mainly used [1,3,4]. Recently several trials have also shown that HPLC coupled with nuclear magnetic resonance (LC/NMR) is a very powerful complementary technique for the on-line plant metabolite identification [5,6]. This new tool will now be also implemented to the existing LCAJV/MS configuration [7]. 

Further research should focus on (1) the description of the mechanisms involved in the degradation in situ (2) the identification of the metabolites released during the process to better estimate the toxicity of the residues (3) the relationship between the WRF and the microbiota, which may counteract the degrading capacity and clearly, (4) the optimization of the process and (5) the scale-up necessary to implement a possible real application. Given the challenge of structural elucidation studies with complex environmental matrices such as sludge, the work performed so far respect point (2) in liquid media is reviewed in the next chapters of the book for PhC [151], UV-F [158] and BFR [157]. 

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