Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry metabolomics platforms: Tools for plant oligosaccharides analysis

Oligosaccharides play a central role in plants and are involved in basal metabolism, and many other functions at cellular levels. Indeed, oligosaccharides analysis was stimulated by the development of analytical chemistry and computational biology and bioinformatics. The last decades have been marked by spectacular developments of metabolomics platforms, and gas or liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometer (GC-MS, LC-MS, UPLC-MS) or tandem mass spectrometer (GC-MS/MS, LC-MS/MS) became key technologies for the identifica-tion and quantification of oligosaccharides in plants. Oligosaccharides are mostly extracted using aqueous ethanol followed by successive hot water. GC is often used for quantification but it requires chemical derivati-zation prior to the analysis, making GC less attractive, compared to LC which is more efficient in the identifi-cation and quantification of oligosaccharides. Coupled with MS, these analytical techniques expanded further oligosaccharides analysis, and with the development of metabolomics raw data were transformed into deci-pherable ones, and further information on oligosaccharides and their anomeric forms were provided. However, these technologies showed some limits due to the huge amount of data generated and their processing. Thus, developing new methods, improvements in sample preparation and creation of chemical libraries will offer deeper insights into the spatio-temporal study of oligosaccharides in plants.