Implementation of liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry methods for untargeted metabolomic analyses of biological samples: A tutorial.

Untargeted metabolomics is now widely recognized as a useful tool for exploring metabolic changes taking place in biological systems under different conditions. By its nature, this is a highly interdisciplinary field of research, and mastering all of the steps comprised in the pipeline can be a challenging task, especially for those researchers new to the topic. In this tutorial, we aim to provide an overview of the most widely adopted methods of performing LC-HRMS-based untargeted metabolomics of biological samples. A detailed protocol is provided in the Supplementary Information for rapidly implementing a basic screening workflow in a laboratory setting. This tutorial covers experimental design, sample preparation and analysis, signal processing and data treatment, and, finally, data analysis and its biological interpretation. Each section is accompanied by up-to-date literature to guide readers through the preparation and optimization of such a workflow, as well as practical information for avoiding or fixing some of the most frequently encountered pitfalls.

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Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.