Analytica Chimica Acta 687 (2011) 159–167 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Analytica Chimica Acta journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/aca Determination of the nucleosides and nucleobases in Tuber samples by dispersive solid-phase extraction combined with liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry Ping Liu a , Yuan-Yuan Li a,d , Hong-Mei Li a , Duan-Ji Wan a , Ya-Jie Tang a,b,c,∗ a Key Laboratory of Fermentation Engineering (Ministry of Education), Hubei Provincial Key Laboratory of Industrial Microbiology, College of Bioengineering, Hubei University of Technology, Wuhan 430068, China b Lab of Biorefinery Engineering, Shanghai Advanced Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 201203, China c National Key Laboratory of Biochemical Engineering, Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100080, China d Research Group for Bioactive Products, Department of Biology & Chemistry, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 6 September 2010 Received in revised form 12 November 2010 Accepted 16 December 2010 Available online 23 December 2010 Keywords: Truffle Nucleosides Nucleobases Protein removal Dispersive solid-phase extraction Liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC–MS) a b s t r a c t A simple, fast and inexpensive method based on dispersive solid phase extraction (DSPE) combined with LC–MS was developed for simultaneous determination of 7 nucleosides and nucleobases (i.e., adenine, hypoxanthine, uridine, adenosine, guanine, guanosine, and inosine) in Tuber fruiting-bodies and fermentation mycelia. The DSPE procedure was firstly introduced to remove the protein interference from sample solutions, and D3520 macroporous resin was chosen as the DSPE sorbent because of its high removal capability on protein interferences, but low adsorption rate on analytes. Besides, key parameters on DSPE procedure (i.e., macroporous resin type, macroporous resin amount, methanol concentration, and vortex time) were optimized, and the protein removal efficacy could achieve about 95% after the process optimization. Though the method validation test, the DSPE-LC–MS method was confirmed to be precise, accurate and sensitive, and the column blinding problem was solved successfully. By using this established method, the total amount of nucleosides and nucleobases in the fermentation mycelia was determined to range from 4881.5 to 12,592.9 g g−1 , which was about 2–25 times higher than the fruiting-bodies (from 498.1 to 2274.1 g g−1 ). The formulation of nucleosides and nucleobases in the fermentation mycelia maintained relatively constant, while the formulation in Tuber fruiting-bodies varied significantly with their species. Hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) showed the formulation similarity of nucleosides and nucleobases between Tuber fermentation mycelia and the fruiting-bodies of Tuber indicum and Tuber himalayense. From the viewpoint of nucleosides and nucleobases, this work confirms the potentiality of Tuber fermentation mycelia as the alternative resource for its fruiting-bodies. © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Truffle, the hypogeous fungus in Tuber species with characteristic aroma and delicious taste, is precious and expensive delicacies, and widely used in the famous French and Italian cuisines. Because of the natural production decrease and the worldwide demand increase, submerged fermentation to produce Tuber mycelia as an alternative resource for its fruiting-body is a potential way to solve this problem. Our lab successfully developed truffle fermentation system and systematically optimized the medium components, including carbon source [1], nitrogen source [2], metal ion [3], and plant oil [4], and developed a novel high-cell density fed- ∗ Corresponding author at: Key Laboratory of Fermentation Engineering (Ministry of Education), Hubei Provincial Key Laboratory of Industrial Microbiology, College of Bioengineering, Hubei University of Technology, Room 310, Wuhan 430068, China. Tel.: +86 27 88015108; fax: +86 27 88015108. E-mail address: yajietang@hotmail.com (Y.-J. Tang). 0003-2670/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.aca.2010.12.025 batch fermentation process [5]. Besides these, we identified the existence of the bioactive androstenol in Tuber fermentation system [6], compared the volatile organic compound (VOC) between Tuber fruiting-bodies and fermentation mycelia [7], and studied the variation of VOC composition with culture condition [8]. All these results demonstrated the chemical composition similarity between Tuber fermentation mycelia and fruiting-bodies, and it is possible to adjust the aroma of truffle fermentation mycelia similar with the natural fruiting-body through the control of fermentation process [6–8]. In order to reveal the secret of truffle special aroma, scientists were more interested in the VOC composition in Tuber fruitingbodies, and more than 200 violates were identified in the recent 20 years [9,10]. Simultaneously, lipid soluble constituent, including ceramide [11,12], fatty acids [13,14], and sterol [15], have also been identified. However, little attention was paid to hydrosoluble components. As a serial of very important hydrosoluble constituents, nucleosides and nucleobases have a lot of physiological activities 160 P. Liu et al. / Analytica Chimica Acta 687 (2011) 159–167 Table 1 Physical and chemical properties of the dispersive sorbent of macroporous resins. Trade name Functional group Surface area (m2 g−1 ) Average pore diameter (nm) D3520 D4006 D101 D312 AB-8 Polystyrene Polystyrene Polystyrene Polystyrene Polystyrene 480–520 400–440 500–550 500–650 480–520 85–90 65–75 90–100 50–60 130–140 including anticonvulsant activity [16], stimulating axon growth in vitro and in the adult central nervous system [17], influencing the growth and differentiation of the gastro intestinal tract [18], and maintaining the immune response [19]. Therefore, nucleosides and nucleobases were selected as the quality control marker in the medicinal higher fungi Ganoderma and Cordyceps genus [20,21]. Due to the remarkable activities of nucleosides and nucleobases, and their research blank in Tuber genus, it was necessary to qualitatively and quantitatively compare the formulation of nucleosides and nucleobases between Tuber fruiting-bodies and fermentation mycelia. The current techniques for assaying nucleosides and nucleobases mainly include liquid chromatography (LC) [22,23] or capillary electrophoresis (CE) [24,25] combined with ultraviolet detector (UV) or mass spectra (MS). It is worthy noting that most of the injection samples were always extracted by water or low concentration methanol aqueous solutions without any clear up step. However, in our preliminary experiment, HPLC system pressure was raised by the assaying samples prepared by the described method [23], and the peaks were distorted when multiple analyses were undertaken. This phenomenon was probably due to the accumulation of dissolved sample protein in the column head, which were co-extracted by high polarity solvent. Therefore, the clean-up step for the removal of protein in solution prior to chromatographic analysis is necessary for assaying nucleosides and nucleobases in Tuber samples. The usual clean-up procedure for removing protein from sample solutions include organic solvent precipitation [26,27], solid-phase extraction (SPE) [28,29], and precolumn-switching technique [30]. As to the organic solvent precipitation method, high proportion of non-polar organic solvent was needed to remove protein. While, high concentration of organic solvent would reduce the solubility of water-soluble compounds, and result in poor recovery. So, organic solvent precipitation was not suitable for the water-soluble analytes. The shortcomings of the SPE and precolumn-switching technique were time-consuming, cumbersome, expensive, and the extra equipment needed. The dispersive solid-phase extraction (DSPE) procedure, a fairly rapid and simple technique with high recovery and accuracy, is widely used in agricultural chemicals residue [31,32] and other analytes [33] determination, which might be also useful to remove the protein interference in the complex biological matrix. Therefore, with the purpose to remove the protein from Tuber sample solution by a more simple way, the new DSPE procedure was tried to solve to column blinding problem. Generally speaking, the sorbents widely used in DSPE are graphitized carbon black (GCB), primary secondary amine (PSA), octadecylsilane (C18 ), aminopropyl (–NH2 ), and aluminaN [34]. No attention was paid to the kinds of advantageous sorbents—macroporous resins. Because of the outstanding virtues, including unique adsorption properties ideal pore structure and various surface functional groups available, low operation expense, less solvent consumption and easy regeneration, macroporous resins have been gained a growing interest in the field of bioactive compounds separation [35,36]. Therefore, it might be a good try to use a suitable macroporous resins as the DSPE cleanup sorbent to remove the interference protein in the nucleosides and nucleobases assay for Tuber samples. Particle diameter (mm) 0.3–1.25 0.3–1.25 0.3–1.25 0.3–1.25 0.3–1.25 Polarity Non-polar Non-polar Non-polar Non-polar Low polar By developing the assay method coupling DSPE with LC–MS in this work, we qualitatively and quantitatively assayed the nucleosides and nucleobases in Tuber fruiting-bodies and fermentation mycelia for the first time. The DSPE procedure was firstly introduced to remove the protein interference. More precisely, this work include (1) identified the types of nucleosides and nucleobases in Tuber samples; (2) developed the DSPE procedure for protein removing; (3) assayed the contents of the target nucleosides and nucleobases in various Tuber samples and analyzed the relationship of Tuber fruiting-bodies and fermentation mycelia through hierarchical clustering analysis. Furthermore, the developed DSPE method for the removal of protein could also be used in other biological samples with protein interference in matrix. 2. Experimental 2.1. Reagents and materials Methanol (HPLC grade) was purchased from Merck (Darmstadt, Germany). Ammonium acetate and formic acid were HPLC grade. Water was prepared using a Millipore Milli Q-Plus system (Millipore, Bedford, MA). Uridine, hypoxanthine, thymine, guanine, guanosine, adenine, adenosine, and inosine were purchased from Sigma (St. Louis, MO, USA). The mobile phase was used as the solvent for stock solution preparation, and the concentrations for each standard were about 0.2 mg mL−1 except the guanine of 0.09 mg mL−1 . A certain volume of stock solution was transferred to 10 mL volumetric flask and diluted with mobile phase to the desired concentration. All the standard solutions were stored at 4 ◦ C in the dark. Macroporous resins including D-3520, D-4006, D-101, and AB-8 were purchased from Nankai Hecheng S & T (Tianjin, China), and macroporous resin D312 was purchased from Shandong Lukang Pharmaceutical Group Co., Ltd. (Shandong, China). Their physical and chemical properties were summarized in Table 1. Macroporous resins were soaked in 95% ethanol, shaken for 24 h and thoroughly washed by deionized water [35,37]. Moisture content of macroporous resin was determined from mass difference after drying at 60 ◦ C until the mass maintained constant. 2.2. Truffle fruiting-body collection and mycelia culture All natural truffle fruiting-bodies were collected in China. Tuber indicum, Tuber aestivum were obtained from Liangwangshan Nature Reserve (Yunnan, China); Tuber borchii var. was obtained from West Hills Forest Park of Kunming (Yunnan, China); Tuber himalayense was obtained from Nujiang River (Yunnan, China); and Tuber sinense was purchased from Mianyang Institute of Edible Fungi (Sichuan, China). All fruiting-bodies were stored in the refrigerator at −20 ◦ C. Truffle mycelia were cultured in our laboratory. The strains of Tuber melanosporum, T. sinense and T. indicum were purchased from Mianyang Institute of Edible Fungi (Sichuan, China). The strain of T. aestivum was kindly provided by Huazhong Agricultural University (Hubei, China). The details of the culture conditions and procedure have been previously described [1]. P. Liu et al. / Analytica Chimica Acta 687 (2011) 159–167 2.3. Sample preparation by DSPE procedure The freeze-dried samples were pulverized and then subjected to pass through a 250-m stainless sieve. 100.0 mg sample powder was accurately weighed, and then extracted with 5 mL water by ultrasonic cell disruption apparatus (J92-II, Ningbo Scientz Biotechnology Instrument, China) for 120 s (400 W power, 2 s ultrasound, 2 s intermittent, and 60 times). After centrifugation (3K15, Sigma, Germany, 13,000 rpm and 10 min), 1 mL supernatant was diluted by 60% methanol aqueous to obtain the final volume at 2 mL and final methanol concentration at 30%. Then 1 mL mixture was transferred to a centrifuge tube, in which 0.05 g (dry weight) macroporous resin D3520 was added as the DSPE sorbent. After vortexed for 60 s (XW80A, Shanghai Huxi Analysis Instrument, China) and centrifuged at 13,000 rpm for 10 min, 0.5 mL supernatant was transferred to another test tube and then evaporated to dry under a gentle nitrogen stream, and finally reconstituted with 0.5 mL of mobile phase. The supernatant was filtrated through 0.45 m filter, 20.0 L was directly injected into the LC-UV or LC–MS for analysis. 161 based on the protein removal ratio (Pr). Vortex time was fixed at 180 s during the experiment of optimizing the addition amount of macroporous rein, and the addition amount of macroporous rein ranged from 0.025 to 0.2 g. The addition amount of macroporous resin was fixed at 0.05 g during the experiment of optimizing vortex time, and vortex time varied from 30 s to 180 s. 2.4.2. HPLC conditions for DSPE optimization The analysis of un-adsorption ratio for nucleosides and nucleobases were preformed on Waters 600E system (Waters, USA), equipped with an on-line degasser, a Waters 2487 UV detector. The column used for separation was Agela Venusil ASB C18 (250 mm × 4.6 mm i.d., 5 m) fitted with a C18 guard column (Agela, Beijing, China). The optimized mobile phase was consisted of methanol (A) and 5 mM ammonium acetate aqueous solution (B), whose pH was adjusted to 2.0 by formic acid, and the separation was carried on by the isocratic elution (A:B = 1:99, v/v). The column oven temperature was maintained at 30 ◦ C and the flow rate was 1.0 mL min−1 . The detection wave was fixed at 254 nm. 2.4. DSPE procedure optimization 2.5. LC–MS analysis 2.4.1. Parameter optimization A series of parameters, including macroporous resin type, macroporous resin amount, methanol concentration, and vortex time were optimized in the DSPE method development process. All the experiments were performed in triplicate. The selection of macroporous resin type (i.e., D-3520, D-4006, D-101, AB-8, and D-312) and methanol concentration (e.g., 20–50%) was based on the integrated consideration for protein removal ratio and un-adsorption ratio of nucleosides and nucleobases. During the experiment for investigating macroporous resin type and methanol concentration, the other two parameters, macroporous resin amount and vortex time were fixed at 0.2 g and 180 s, respectively. The experiments were performed as follows: 4 copies of 1 mL crude extract solution (concentration at 20 mg mL−1 : 100 mg sample extracted by 5 mL aqueous solution, and containing 20 g mL−1 thymine as an internal standard) were diluted by methanol aqueous with different concentrations (40%, 60%, 80% and 100%, respectively) to make the final volume at 2 mL and the final methanol concentrations at 20%, 30%, 40%, and 50%, respectively. After the process of vortex (180 s) and centrifugation (13,000 rpm for 10 min), all the aforementioned sample solutions were treated by the following procedure in parallel: firstly, 0.3 mL supernatant was taken and treated according to Bradford method [38], and the relative amount of protein was defined as the value of “Absorbance” at 595 nm (recorded as “Ac ”); and then another 0.3 mL supernatant was directly injected to HPLC for analyzing the amount of nucleoside and nucleobases (conditions in detail were seen in Section 2.4.2), and the peak area for each analyte was recorded as “PAc ”. Secondly, the left 1 mL supernatant was transferred into a new centrifuge tube, in which 0.2 g (dry weight) macroporous resin was added. After vortexed 180 s and centrifuged (13,000 rpm for 10 min), the relative amount of protein, as well as nucleosides and nucleobases in the supernatant, were determined again according to the aforementioned process and recorded as “As ”, and “PAs ”, respectively. Thus the protein removal ratio (Pr) for a macroporous resin at a specific methanol concentration was calculated by: Pr = 100% × (Ac − As )/Ac , and the un-adsorption ratio for each analyte (UAr) was calculated by: UAr = 100% × PAs /PAc . The macroporous reins and methanol concentration in solutions, which lead to high protein removal ratio and un-adsorption ratio of nucleosides and nucleobases, was preferred. After the type of macroporous resin and concentration of methanol were fixed, the other two significant factors of the addition amount of macroporous resin and vortex time were optimized Analysis for nucleosides and nucleobases were preformed on LCMS-2010EV system (Shimadzu, Tokyo, Japan), equipped with a DGU-20A3 on-line degasser, two LC-20AD solvent delivery pumps, a CTO-20AC column oven, a SIL-20A autosampler, a SPD-M20A photodiode array detector, a single quadrupole mass spectrometer with an electrospray ionization interface, and a LCMS solution workstation. The column used for separation was Shim-pack VP-ODS (Shimadzu, 250 mm × 2.0 mm i.d., 5 m) fitted with a C18 guard column (Shimadzu). The optimized mobile phase was consisted of methanol (A) and 5 mM ammonium acetate aqueous solution (B), whose pH was adjusted to 2.0 by formic acid, and the separation was carried on by the isocratic elution (A:B = 1:99, v/v). The column oven temperature was maintained at 30 ◦ C and the flow rate was 0.2 mL min−1 . Peaks were detected and scanned with the wavelength range from 200 to 600 nm by photodiode array detector, and the positive mode was adopted in MS detection. For qualitative analysis, mass spectrometry was carried out in the scan mode from m/z 50 to 350u. However, for quantitative analysis, the selected ion monitoring (SIM) mode was used, and the [M+H]+ at m/z 136, 137, 245, 268, 284, 152, 269 and 127 was selected as the characteristic ion fragment for adenine, hypoxanthine, uridine, adenosine, guanosine, guanine, inosine, and thymine. Mass spectrometric detection conditions for both scan and SIM mode were as follows: ion source temperature was 250 ◦ C. Curved desolvation line (CDL) and heat block temperatures for the analysis were set at 250 and 200 ◦ C, respectively. Probe voltage was +4.5 kV. Detector voltage was 1.5 kV. CDL voltage was −20 V. Drying and nebulizer gases of nitrogen were set at 1.5 L min−1 with a pressure of 0.02 MPa. 2.6. Method validation In order to determine the linearity of investigated compounds, a series of standard solutions at 7 different concentrations, including the internal standard (I.S., 10 g mL−1 ), were treated by the proposed method in Section 2.3, and then analyzed by LC–ESIMS under SIM mode to establish calibration curve. The calibration curve was constructed by plotting the peak area ratio of individual standard to I.S. versus the ratio of their corresponding concentrations. The limits of detection (LOD) and quantification (LOQ) for each analyte were determined at a signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) of about 3 and 10, respectively. The method precision and accuracy were evaluated by analyzing the mixed standards in three replicates for short-term (1 day) 162 P. Liu et al. / Analytica Chimica Acta 687 (2011) 159–167 Table 2 The molecular spectra information of the nucleoside and nucleobases in Tuber samples. Analyte Adenine Hypoxanthine Uridine Adenosine Guanine Guanosine Inosine Thyminec a b c tR (min) 4.16 5.75 7.41 8.72 12.48 12.48 13.48 10.08 UVmax (nm) [M+H]+ (m/z) 261 248 257 264 254 254 248 262 136 137 245 268 152 284 269 127 [M+Na]+ (m/z) [2M+H]+ (m/z) [2M+Na]+ (m/z) 159 267 273 295 Fruiting-body a T. sin. √b √ √ √ √ √ √ T. ind. √ √ √ √ √ √ √ Fermentation mycelia T. him. √ √ √ √ √ √ √ T. aest. √ √ √ √ √ √ √ T. borc. √ √ √ √ √ T. mel. √ √ √ √ √ √ √ T. sin. √ √ √ √ √ √ √ T. ind. √ √ √ √ √ √ √ T. aest. √ √ √ √ √ √ √ T. sin. = T. sinense; T. ind. = T. indicum; T. him. = T. himalayense; T. aest. = T. aestivum; T. borc. = T. borchii var.; T. mel. = T. melanosporum. √ means the compound was identified in the corresponding samples. Thymine was not found in any Tuber samples, and was selected as the internal standard substance for the following experiments. and long-term (3 days). The intra-day precision was defined as relative standard deviation (RSD) calculated from three independent assay in the same day, and the inter-day precision was the RSD calculated from three independent assays in the separate days. The accuracy was evaluated by the mean deviation between the measured concentration and its spiked concentration. The sample recovery was performed by adding known amount of individual standards into an accurately weighed mixed sample mentioned above. The mixed sample was extracted and analyzed using the method mentioned above. For each concentration, three replicate experiments with the whole analysis process were performed. Recovery was calculated with the following equation: recovery (%) = 100 × amount found/(original amount + amount spiked). 2.7. Hierarchical clustering analysis Hierarchical cluster analysis is a multivariate analysis technique, which is used to sort samples into groups. In our study, the hierarchical clustering analysis (HCA) of samples was performed using SPSS 15.0 software (Chicago, USA). The Between-groups linkage cluster method, the squared Euclidean distance measure and zscores standardization [39] were used to establish clusters. 3. Results and discussion 3.1. Qualitative analysis for the nucleosides and nucleobases in Tuber fermentation mycelia and fruiting-bodies In order to identify the nucleosides and nucleobases in Tuber samples, the standard substances (i.e., adenine, hypoxanthine, uridine, adenosine, guanine, guanosine, inosine, and thymine) and Tuber samples extracting solution were analyzed by LC-UV/ESI-MS in parallel. The mass and UV spectrum data for individual standard substance was compared in Table 2. As the UV spectrum of each standard substance was too similar with each other, they could not be used to identify the nucleosides and nucleobases. Comparatively, the MS spectra obtained by scan mode provided much more useful information for identification, because the signals of [M+H]+ , as well as [2M+H]+ , [M+Na]+ , and [2M+Na]+ were specific to the individual nucleoside and nucleobases. Therefore, the nucleosides and nucleobases in Tuber samples were identified by comparing the retention time and the on-line MS spectra information with the standard substance. Although the guanosine and guanine were co-eluted at the same time (tR = 12.48 min) (Table 2), they could also be well distinguished with each other by MS ion fragment [M+H]+ , because the m/z of 152 was specific to guanine, and the m/z of 284 was to guanosine. Among the investigated nucleoside and nucleobases, thymine was not found in any Tuber samples. Adenine, uridine, hypoxanthine, Fig. 1. Effects of methanol concentration and macroporous resin type on the protein removal ratio for Tuber sample water extraction solution. Conditions: sample concentration, 20 mg mL−1 crude extract; sample volume, 0.5 mL; the weight of macroporous resin, 0.2 g; and vortex time, 180 s. adenosine, guanosine, guanine and inosine were confirmed to be presented in all Tuber samples, except that adenine and uridine were absent in the fruiting-body of T. borchii var. Therefore, these seven compounds (i.e., adenine, uridine, hypoxanthine, adenosine, guanosine, guanine and inosine) were selected as the target nucleosides and nucleobases, and thymine was selected as the internal standard substance for the following experiments. 3.2. DSPE procedure optimization With the purpose to remove the protein from the sample, the DSPE procedure was adopted to selectively adsorb the protein, and keep most of the investigated compounds remain in the sample. The significances of key factors (e.g., the type and amount of macroporous resin, methanol concentration, and vortex time) on the performance of DSPE procedure were studied in detail. 3.2.1. Influences of macroporous resin and methanol concentration on the protein removal ratio Fig. 1 shows that macroporous resin D3520 has the best performance on protein removing, whose protein removal ratio was around 100% regardless of methanol concentration. For the other four kinds of macroporous resins, their protein removal ratios were increased with the increase of methanol concentration within the range of investigated. Therefore, macroporous resin D3520 was the best choice from the viewpoint of protein removal ratio. The purpose of DSPE was to selectively adsorb protein, and to reserve analytes in solution as more as possible, so the un-adsorption effect of macroporous resins on analytes should be further studied. P. Liu et al. / Analytica Chimica Acta 687 (2011) 159–167 163 Fig. 2. Effects of methanol concentration and macroporous resin type on the un-adsorption ratio for nucleosides and nucleobases. (A) At the methanol concentration of 20%, (B) at the methanol concentration of 30%, (C) at the methanol concentration of 40%, (D) at the methanol concentration of 50%. Conditions: sample concentration, 20 mg mL−1 crude extract; sample volume, 0.5 mL; the weight of macroporous resin, 0.2 g; and vortex time, 180 s. 3.2.2. Influences of macroporous resin and methanol concentration on the un-adsorption ratio for the target compounds In order to make sure most of the nucleosides and nucleobases were remained in solvent instead of being adsorbed by sorbent, effects of macroporous resin and methanol concentration on the un-adsorption ratio of analytes were studied. As shown in Fig. 2, all five macroporous resins had adsorption effect on nucleosides and nucleobases, as well as the internal standard substance (I.S., thymine). The un-adsorption ratios for analytes were rising accompanying with the increase of methanol concentration. Among the five macroporous resins, D4006 and D312 had the weakest adsorption capabilities on nucleosides and nucleobases, thus their un-adsorption ratios for analytes and I.S. were higher than the others’ at the same concentration of methanol. However, macroporous resin D4006 and D312 were not satisfied to our purpose for protein remove because of their poor protein adsorption capabilities (Fig. 1). Although the analytes and I.S. were partly adsorbed by macroporous resins D101, AB-8, and D3520, the un-adsorption ratios of at least 60% could still achieve when the methanol concentration was not below 30%. Such a small faction of analytes and I.S. adsorbed by macroporous resins would not affect the performance of the quantitive assay. Comprehensive consideration of protein removing ratio and analytes un-adsorption ratio, macroporous resin D3520 is the optimal DSPE sorbent. Although the un-adsorption ratios for analytes and I.S. could achieve at least 60% when the methanol concentration was not below 30%, the un-adsorption ratio for individual analyte and I.S. was more equal with the methanol concentration at 30%, which was more benefit to good accuracy for the applied inter-standard method. Furthermore, the DSPE procedure with 30% methanol was much clearer and colorless than any other solutions with higher methanol concentrations. This phenomenon demonstrated the relatively high adsorption capability of macroporous resin in low methanol concentration, not only for protein, but also the pigments and some other nonpolarity impurity. So, 30% of methanol was selected for DSPE procedure. 3.2.3. Influences of macroporous resin amount and vortex time on the protein removal ratio The macroporous resin amount and the vortex time were also the important factors for DSPE procedure which significantly affecting the protein removal ratio. As shown in Fig. 3A, the protein removal ratio for macroporous resin D3520 increased with the increase of the addition macroporous resins weight from 0 to 0.20 g, and then achieved a plateau when the weight exceeded 0.05 g. This result indicated that 0.05 g of macroporous resin D3520 was enough to remove about 95% of protein from the 0.5 mL 20 mg mL−1 crude extract. The influence of vortex time on the protein removal ratio was shown in Fig. 3B. The protein removal ratio increased from 0 to about 95% when vortex time increased from 0 to 60 s, and then maintained constant when the vortex time exceeded 60 s. This result indicated that it takes 60 s for macroporous resin D3520 to achieve the protein adsorption balance. So, the optimal dispersive sorbent amount and vortex time were selected as 0.05 g and 60 s for the 0.5 mL 20 mg mL−1 crude extract, respectively. To conclude, for 0.5 mL 20 mg mL−1 Tuber crude extract, 0.05 g macroporous resin D3520 was chosen as the dispersive sorbent; the methanol concentration in solution was adjusted to 30%; and vortex time was fixed at 60 s. Within this DSPE procedure, protein removal ratio was about 95%, the un-adsorption ratio for individual analyte and I.S. were keep at the same level (above 70%). And, the phenomenon, such as HPLC system pressure rising, and the distorted peaks, did not happen again. 3.3. Method validation Internal standard method was adopted to counteract the partial loss of analytes during DSPE procedure. Thymine was selected as the internal standard substance because it was not found in any Tuber samples. As shown in Table 3, the correlation coefficients (R2 ) ranged from 0.9993 to 0.9999. The high correlation coefficient values indicated good correlations between investigated compounds concentrations and their peak area ratios. The different ratios of LOQ and LOD may be derived from the difference of MS response to the analytes, 164 P. Liu et al. / Analytica Chimica Acta 687 (2011) 159–167 Fig. 3. Effect of macroporous resin D3520 weight (A) and voxter time (B) on the protein removal ratio. Conditions for (A): sample concentration, 20 mg mL−1 crude extract; sample volume, 0.5 mL; methanol concentration, 30%; and vortex time, 180 s. Conditions for (B): sample concentration, 20 mg mL−1 crude extract; sample volume, 0.5 mL; methanol concentration, 30%; and the weight of macroporous resin, 0.05 g. Table 3 Linear regression data and validation of the developed determination method for nucleosides and nucleobases (n = 3). Analyte Linear regression data Linear range (g mL−1 ) Adenine Hypoxanthine Uridine Adenosine Guanine Guanosine Inosine a 0.5–100.1 0.5–109.3 0.5–98.9 0.6–111.2 0.4–84.5 0.5–98.8 0.5–90.1 Regression equation R2 a y = 0.1772 × −0.0482 y = 0.1591 × −0.0723 y = 0.0759 × −0.0212 y = 0.1164 × −0.0507 y = 0.0710 × −0.0211 y = 0.0868 × −0.0352 y = 0.0943 × −0.0374 0.9998 0.9993 0.9998 0.9995 0.9997 0.9996 0.9999 LOD (g mL−1 ) LOQ (g mL−1 ) 0.4 0.4 0.5 0.1 0.3 0.2 0.3 1.5 1.0 1.6 0.3 1.0 0.7 0.8 R2 , squares of correlation coefficients for the standard curves. and the LODs were between 0.1 and 0.5 g mL−1 , and the LOQs were between 0.3 and 1.6 g mL−1 , respectively. These results indicated that LC–MS was sensitive for the qualitative and quantitative determination of the analytes. As shown in Table 4, the relative standard deviation (RSD) was not higher than 8.8%, and the highest analytical error was 6.5% and 9.4% for short-term and long-term, respectively. Table 5 shows that the recoveries of the 7 investigated compounds ranged from 95.0% to 111.0% with RSD between 0.2 and 10.8%, respectively, which indicated good performance of the DSPE method for quantitative assay. 3.4. Determination and discrimination of the target nucleosides and nucleobases in Tuber fruiting-bodies and fermentation mycelia The contents of the target 7 nucleosides and nucleobases in Tuber fruiting-bodies and fermentation mycelia were determined by LC–ESI-MS. The SIM technique in mass spectrum was adopted because it can distinguish the co-eluted compounds, which could not be identified by UV chromatogram. The SIM chromatograms of various Tuber samples were shown in Fig. 4, and the determination results were summarized in Table 6. Except adenine and Table 4 Intra- and inter-day variability for the assay of nucleosides and nucleobases (n = 3). Analyte Conc. (g mL−1 ) Intra-day Found (g mL Inter-day −1 ) R.S.D.(%) Error (%) Found (g mL−1 ) R.S.D. (%)a Error (%)b a b Adenine 20.4 4.4 19.9 4.3 3.1 3.9 2.9 3.6 19.4 4.1 4.0 4.8 4.9 5.7 Hypoxanthine 21.6 4.2 21.0 4.1 2.7 3.3 2.7 3.0 20.6 4.2 1.6 2.2 4.6 1.5 Uridine 20.8 3.8 19.9 3.8 1.1 6.5 4.4 4.7 19.3 4.0 1.5 6.1 7.4 5.0 Adenosine 20.6 4.1 20.2 4.1 3.0 3.5 2.6 2.9 20.1 4.0 4.3 2.2 3.0 1.9 Guanine 20.2 3.9 20.0 4.0 1.3 2.0 1.2 3.5 20.8 3.8 1.7 5.2 3.1 4.8 Guanosine 21.0 3.8 21.6 4.0 8.8 2.2 5.9 6.5 20.7 4.2 6.0 2.6 4.6 9.4 Inosine 19.8 4.1 20.2 4.2 3.9 2.8 2.6 2.7 20.4 4.3 8.2 2.7 6.9 3.9 a b R.S.D. (%) = 100 × S.D./mean. Error (%) = ABS(spiked concentration − measured concentration)/3 spiked concentration × 100. P. Liu et al. / Analytica Chimica Acta 687 (2011) 159–167 165 Table 5 Recoveries for the assay of nucleosides and nucleobases in Tuber samples (n = 3). R.S.D. (%)b Original (g) Spiked (g) Adenine 11.99 22.54 28.18 33.81 36.82 42.11 48.54 106.6 104.8 106.0 1.3 1.0 1.2 1.96 1.98 2.47 2.96 4.12 4.21 4.68 104.7 95.0 95.0 6.3 1.6 1.3 Uridine 29.98 11.02 13.77 16.52 40.62 45.14 50.46 99.1 103.2 108.5 1.0 5.8 2.3 Adenosine 45.69 42.31 52.89 63.46 86.46 98.07 104.77 98.3 99.5 96.0 0.7 0.6 1.6 Guanine 61.21 44.46 55.57 66.69 112.15 122.58 134.30 106.1 105.0 105.0 1.4 0.6 0.6 Guanosine 65.86 41.81 52.27 62.72 115.59 128.49 136.17 107.3 108.8 105.9 1.6 3.9 0.2 1.17 3.54 4.43 5.31 5.10 6.21 6.71 108.1 111.0 103.5 10.8 8.4 4.5 Hypoxanthine Inosine a b Found (g) Recovery (%)a Analyte Recovery (%) = 100 × amount found/(original amount + amount spiked). R.S.D. (%) = 100 × S.D./mean. uridine were not detected in the fruiting-bodies of T. borchii var., the 7 target nucleosides and nucleobases were detected in all Tuber samples. Despite their contents varied with the species, adenosine, guanine, and guanosine were the predominant nucleosides in all fermentation mycelia. However, the nucleosides formulation for each species was quite different, so it is difficult to find the common major nucleosides in the fruiting-bodies. Typically, the highest contents of adenine and uridine were determined in T. sinense fruiting-bodies, while they were not found in T. borchii var. fruiting-bodies. The highest concentration of adenosine was detected in the fruiting-bodies of T. indicum and T. himalayense, while its concentration was extreme low in the fruiting-bodies of T. aestivum and T. borchii var. More interestingly, total amount of nucleosides and nucleobases existed significant difference between the fruiting-bodies and fermentation mycelia. As shown in Table 6, the total amount of nucleosides and nucleobases in fermentation mycelia ranged from 4881.5 to 12,592.9 g g−1 , which was about 2–25 times higher than those in the fruiting-bodies (i.e., 498.1–2274.1 g g−1 ). The contents of the three key nucleosides (i.e., adenosine, guanine, and guanosine) in fermentation mycelia Fig. 4. The typical chromatograms in SIM mode. (A) The mixed standards, (B) the fruiting-bodies of T. sinense, (C) the fruiting-bodies of T. himalayense, (D) the fruiting-bodies of T. aestivum, (E) the fruiting-bodies of T. borchii var., and (F) the fermentation mycelia of T. melanosporum. Symbols for the analytes: U, uridine; H, hypoxanthine; Ad, adenosine; G, guanine; Gu, guanosine; I, inosine; and IS, thymine. IS concentration was 10 g mL−1 in both mixed standards and samples. 166 P. Liu et al. / Analytica Chimica Acta 687 (2011) 159–167 Table 6 The contents (g g−1 ) of nucleosides and nucleobases in Tuber fruiting-bodies and fermentation mycelia (n = 3). Analyte Fruiting-bodies a T. sin. Adenine Hypoxanthine Uridine Adenosine Guanine Guanosine Inosine Total a b c Fermentation mycelia T. ind. 318.3 ± 17.9b 172.3 161.2 ± 2.1 37.0 274.5 ± 8.4 309.2 241.8 ± 10.9 415.6 185.8 ± 9.8 376.0 238.6 ± 7.2 404.8 85.9 ± 3.4 77.2 1506.1 ± 64.2 1792.1 T. him. ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± 3.3 2.2 5.7 10.0 12.7 11.7 5.3 79.2 346.3 31.8 260.1 542.1 481.2 544.5 68.1 2274.1 T. aest. ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± 7.1 1.6 6.2 9.6 9.5 2.6 2.1 106.5 265.0 126.2 137.3 50.1 200.0 226.2 215.5 1220.3 ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± 12.1 6.7 2.5 2.4 7.1 3.6 10.1 71.9 T. borc. T. mel. n.d.c 175.9 ± 2.3 n.d. 58.6 ± 1.3 49.1 ± 3.6 95.7 ± 5.5 118.8 ± 3.8 498.1 ± 24.7 357.5 85.5 1671.9 2178.4 2629.6 2884.4 42.7 9850.0 T. sin. ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± 22.3 2.7 25.4 95.1 76.0 83.4 1.9 365.9 475.8 96.7 1285.2 2762.8 3821.1 4082.2 69.1 12592.9 T. ind. ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± 17.7 5.4 49.2 50.6 105.9 195.5 1.7 239.3 532.2 162.0 1265.7 2182.7 2576.6 2812.1 119.8 9651.1 T. aest. ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± 20.7 4.3 51.9 62.2 65.6 51.6 2.09 202.4 320.0 82.0 1110.7 1322.8 966.1 1036.7 43.2 4881.5 ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± 19.3 4.03 37.3 73.7 53.5 45.1 1.2 146.4 T. sin. = T. sinense; T. ind. = T. indicum; T. him. = T. himalayense; T. aest. = T. aestivum; T. borc. = T. borchii var.; T. mel. = T. melanosporum. Each value is expressed as mean ± SD (n = 3). n.d., not detected. Fig. 5. Dendrogram of clustering of Tuber samples based on the contents of nucleosides and nucleobases. Options set were: method, Between-groups linkage; measure of distance, squared Euclidean distance; standardization of variables, z-scores. (a FM = fermentation mycelia; b FB = fruiting-bodies). were 2–52 times higher than those in the fruiting-bodies. All these results indicated that Tuber fermentation mycelia contained much more the target nucleosides than the fruiting-bodies. The formulation of the target 7 nucleosides and nucleobases almost kept constant in fermentation mycelia, which were varied significantly with the species in Tuber fruiting-bodies. Based on the analytes contents, the relationship of Tuber samples was further analyzed by hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA). Fig. 5 clearly shows that total 9 Tuber samples were divided into 5 clusters. Cluster-I was formed by the fermentation mycelia of T. sinense, T. indicum, T. melanosporum, which were cultured under the same condition. We also observed that the fermentation mycelia of T. aestivum closed to the other 3 fermentation mycelia although T. aestivum fermentation mycelia did not belong to Cluster-I. From the viewpoint of nucleosides and nucleobases, Tuber fermentation mycelia were quite similar when mycelia were cultured under the same condition. Similar phenomenon was also observed in our previous studies about the volatile organic compounds in Tuber mycelia [8]. Interestingly, the fruiting-bodies of T. indicum and T. himalayense belonged to the same cluster, which closed to Tuber fermentation mycelia. This result indicated that Tuber fermentation mycelia were very similar with the fruiting-bodies of T. indicum and T. himalayense from the viewpoint of nucleosides and nucleobases. The fruiting-bodies of T. borchii var., T. aestivum and T. sinense did not belong to one cluster, and shows pretty long distance with the fruiting-bodies of T. indicum and T. himalayense. The significant distinction mainly resulted from the heterogeneity of the investigated fruiting-bodies (e.g., age, origin, soil type). To conclude, the formulation similarity of nucleosides and nucleobases existed between the fermentation mycelia of various Tuber species cultured under the same condition, and between Tuber fermentation mycelia and the fruiting-bodies of T. indicum and T. himalayense. From the viewpoint of nucleosides and nucleobases, this work partly confirmed the rationality of Tuber fermentation mycelia as the alternative resource for truffle fruitingbodies. 4. Conclusion Based on the comparison of their retention time and the charactering ion fragment to those of authentic standards, 7 nucleosides and nucleobases (i.e., adenine, hypoxanthine, uridine, adenosine, guanine, guanosine, and inosine) in Tuber fruiting-bodies and fermentation mycelia were identified for the first time. As a clean-up procedure, dispersive solid phase extraction (DSPE) was firstly introduced to remove the protein from the extract solution, and D3520 macroporous resin was chosen as the DSPE sorbent because of its high removal capability on protein interferences, but low adsorption rate on analytes. Additionally, key parameters on DSPE procedure (i.e., macroporous resin type, macroporous resin amount, methanol concentration, and vortex time) were optimized, and the protein removal efficacy could achieve about 95% after the process optimization. Besides, the column blinding problems, such as HPLC system pressure rising, and peaks distorting, were solved successfully. The mode of selective ion monitoring (SIM) was applied in the quantitative assay method to distinguish the co-eluting guanine and guanosine. In the method validation test, the R.S.D. of precisions was not higher than 8.8%; he highest analytical error was 6.5% and 9.4% for short-term and long-term, respectively; the recoveries ranged from 95.0% to 111.0%; the limits of detection and quantification for analytes were in the order of 0.1–0.5 g mL−1 and 0.3–1.6 g mL−1 , respectively; and all calibration curves showed good linearity (R2 > 0.999) within the range as investigated. All these results demonstrated the DSPE combined with LC–MS method was accurate, precise, replicable, and sensitive. The 7 target nucleosides and nucleobases were P. Liu et al. / Analytica Chimica Acta 687 (2011) 159–167 detected in all Tuber samples except the fruiting-body of T. borchii var. Adenosine, guanine, and guanosine were the predominant nucleosides in all fermentation mycelia, while the major nucleosides and nucleobases in the fruiting-bodies were significantly varied among different species. The total amount of nucleosides and nucleobases in the fermentation mycelia ranged from 4881.5 to 12,592.9 g g−1 , which was about 2–25 times higher than those (i.e., 498.1–2274.1 g g−1 ) in the fruiting-bodies. Hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) further demonstrated the similarity of nucleosides and nucleobases formulation among various Tuber fermentation mycelia, as well as between the Tuber fermentation mycelia and the fruiting-bodies of T. indicum and T. himalayense. This work partly confirms the rationality of Tuber fermentation mycelia as the alternative resource for truffle fruiting-bodies. Acknowledgement Financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC, Project Nos. 20706012 and 20976038), National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program, 2007CB714306), the Key Project of Chinese Ministry of Education (Project No. 210132), Hubei Provincial Natural Science Foundation for Innovative Research Team (Project No. 2008CDA002), Discipline Leader Project of Wuhan Municipality (Project No. 200951830553), Scientific Research Key Project of Hubei Provincial Department of Education (Project No. Z20101401), the Open Project Program for Key Laboratory of Fermentation Engineering (Ministry of Education), and the Open Funding Project of the National Key Laboratory of Biochemical Engineering (2010KF-06) are gratefully acknowledged. Ya-Jie Tang also thanks the Chutian Scholar Program (Hubei Provincial Department of Education, China) (2006). References [1] Y.J. Tang, L.L. Zhu, D.S. Li, Z.Y. Mi, H.M. Li, Process Biochem. 43 (2008) 576–586. [2] R.S. 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