Describing the fecal metabolome in cryogenically collected samples from healthy participants.

IntroductionThe chemical composition of feces plays an important role in human metabolism. Metabolomics and lipidomics are valuable tools for screening the metabolite composition in feces. Here we set out to describe fecal metabolite composition in healthy participants in frozen stools.\n\nMethodsFrozen stool samples were collected from 10 healthy volunteers and cryogenically drilled in four areas along the specimen. Polar metabolites were analyzed using derivatization followed by two-dimensional gas chromatography and time of flight mass spectrometry. Lipids were detected using ultra high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with quadruple time-of-flight mass spectrometry. The technical variation threshold was set to 30% in pooled quality control samples and metabolite variation was then assessed in four areas per specimen. A data-generated network using metabolites found in all areas was computed for healthy participants.\n\nResults2326 metabolic features were detected. Out of a total of 298 metabolites that were annotated we report here 185 that showed a technical variation of x\nView larger version (16K):\norg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@17db665org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@51e140org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@19b55d7org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@120d399_HPS_FORMAT_FIGEXP M_FIG C_FIG