Mass spectrometry based analytical approaches and pitfalls for toxicometabolomics of arsenic in mammals: A tutorial review

Abstract

The present review focus on the analytical platforms and the workflow for toxicometabolomics with a special emphasis on their strengths and pitfalls presenting as a case study the toxicometabolomics of arsenic in mammals. Although powerful analytical methods and techniques are currently available for metabolomics, the main “bottleneck” is still the absence of unified protocols for sample preparation (e.g. quenching, solvents used) as well as several important factors in toxicometabolomics, which drastically affect the metabolism (e.g. selection of model organisms, xenobiotic doses, chemical form of the xenobiotic, exposure route, biological sample). In this context, the applicability to complex samples, higher sensitivity, specificity and the possibility to perform quantitative analysis offered by MS is crucial to probe xenobiotic induced metabolic changes to evaluate the stress responses. Nowadays, the use of different metabolomic platforms allowed determining important changes in the metabolism induced by arsenic in mammals such as alterations in the energy (e.g. Glycolysis, Kreb's cycle), amino acid, lipid, nucleotide and androgen metabolisms.