Using sheath-liquid reagents for capillary electrophoresis-mass spectrometry: application to the analysis of phenolic plant extracts.

The combination of CE and MS is now a widely used tool that can provide a combination of high resolution separations with detailed structural information. Recently, we highlighted the benefits of an approach to add further functionality to this well-established hyphenated technique, namely the possibility to perform chemical reactions within the sheath-liquid of the CE-MS interface . Apart from using hydrogen/deuterium exchange for online determination of numbers of exchangeable protons, the addition of DPPH• (2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl) to the sheath-liquid can be used as a fast screening tool for studying antioxidant characteristics of individual components. Such a CE-MS methodology allows rapid and information-rich analysis with minimal reagent and sample consumption to be performed. In the present work, we demonstrate the applicability of this approach for the characterization of phenolic plant extracts from the Labiatae family, namely Rosmarinus officinalis and Melissa officinalis. Using the described approach, a wide range of compounds (15 and 13 phenolic compounds, respectively) could be confidently identified using a combination of high resolution CE-MS separations with implementation of online deuterium exchange and DPPH• reactions. These compounds included polyphenols, phenolic acids, and triterpene acids. In conjunction with online MS/MS experiments, extensive structural information for aglyconic and glycosylated antioxidants present in the extracts could be obtained using simple experimental changes, which can be carried out prior to the purchasing of expensive chemical standards or the time-consuming preparative isolation of individual compounds.

Addition of reagents to the sheath liquid: a novel concept in capillary electrophoresis-mass spectrometry.

Conventional coupling of capillary electrophoresis with electrospray ionisation mass spectrometry typically relies on the use of a triaxial sheath-flow liquid interface to facilitate electrical contact and provide a stable electrospray. In this type of analysis, the use of additives in the sheath liquid itself can also be used to improve ionisation of analytes and even facilitate reactions between separation and detection steps (which we broadly term "sheath-flow chemistry"). In the present work, this concept is demonstrated using two types of sheath-flow reactions for CE coupled with quadrupole time-of-flight (Q-TOF) MS detection. Sheath liquid compositions containing deuterated solvents or DPPH (2,2-diphenyl-1-dipicrylhydrazyl) stable free-radicals yield useful additional structural information for separated analytes. Investigations of fundamental physical and chemical characteristics of the sheath liquid coupling show their direct influence on the efficiency and some of the products of the respective reactions. For example, reducing the capillary internal diameter from 75 to 25µm increased the relative abundance of fully deuterated ions detected by 63-65% (5 exchangeable hydrogens) using constant sheath-flow conditions. Addition of 0.05-0.2mM DPPH to the sheath liquid reduced the peak total ion count obtained for typical antioxidant species by 20 to >95% allowing strongly antioxidant species from mixtures to be readily identified and further studied. The presented approach allows a rapid and information-rich analysis to be performed with minimal reagent and sample consumption.