Effective Comparison of Yeast Extracts Using High Resolution GC and GCxGC-HRTOFMS

Yeast has been used for centuries in the production of beer, wine, and baked goods.1 In modern times, yeast has become a “cellular factory” for the manufacture of bioethanol, lactic acid, and other valuable organic molecules.2-4 In order for this bioengineering to become realized, the metabolism of yeast must be clearly understood. Unfortunately, yeast is difficult to study due to the chemical and physical complexity of metabolites and their wide concentration range. Furthermore, the bottleneck in metabolomics research and engineering is the characterization of the diverse features present in these samples. In this study we explored the utilization of gas chromatography high resolution time-of-flight mass spectrometry (GC-HRT) and GC×GC-HRT for efficient metabolite chromatographic separation, minimization of background interference, resolution of isobaric interferences, and rapid compound identification.