Chemical derivatization in LC-MS-based metabolomics study

Because of great diversity of chemical and physical properties and wide ranges of concentrations of different metabolites in metabolome samples, metabolome analysis is a challenging task. Compromises in coverage, quantification accuracy and sample throughput are often used to provide a sufficient amount of metabolomic information for a biological or clinical application. Chemical derivatization of metabolites offers an opportunity to improve the overall analytical performance of liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC-MS)-based metabolomics. This review highlights recent progresses (since 2016) in the field of chemical derivatization LC-MS for both targeted and untargeted metabolome analysis. Due to increased recognition of the benefits of derivatization in LC-MS metabolome analysis, many research groups have been involved in advancing this active research field. Due to space limitation, we selected a few examples of recently reported derivatization methods and applications to showcase the advantages of chemical derivatization, compared to conventional label-free methods.