www.nature.com/scientificreports OPEN Rapid Screening of Ellagitannins in Natural Sources via Targeted Reporter Ion Triggered Tandem Received: 20 March 2018 Accepted: 17 May 2018 Mass Spectrometry Published: xx xx xxxx Jeremiah J. Bowers1, Harsha P. Gunawardena2, Anaëlle Cornu3, Ashwini S. Narvekar1, Antoine Richieu3, Denis Defeux3, Stéphane Quideau3 & Nishanth Tharayil1 Complex biomolecules present in their natural sources have been difcult to analyze using traditional analytical approaches. Ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography (UHPLC-MS/MS) methods have the potential to enhance the discovery of a less well characterized and challenging class of biomolecules in plants, the ellagitannins. We present an approach that allows for the screening of ellagitannins by employing higher energy collision dissociation (HCD) to generate reporter ions for classifcation and collision-induced dissociation (CID) to generate unique fragmentation spectra for isomeric variants of previously unreported species. Ellagitannin anions efciently form three characteristic reporter ions after HCD fragmentation that allows for the classifcation of unknown precursors that we call targeted reporter ion triggering (TRT). We demonstrate how a tandem HCD-CID experiment might be used to screen natural sources using UHPLC-MS/MS by application of 22 method conditions from which an optimized data-dependent acquisition (DDA) emerged. The method was verifed not to yield false- positive results in complex plant matrices. We were able to identify 154 non-isomeric ellagitannins from strawberry leaves, which is 17 times higher than previously reported in the same matrix. The systematic inclusion of CID spectra for isomers of each species classifed as an ellagitannin has never been possible before the development of this approach. Te quality and composition of nutraceuticals derived from fruits and vegetables has been placed under greater scrutiny in recent years in part due to the willingness of health-conscious consumers to spend more for higher quality agricultural products. In addition to bioactive compounds such as vitamins E, C, sterols and carot- enoids, the polyphenolic compounds in plants ofer various degrees of antioxidant, anticancer, antimicrobial, anti-infammatory, and anti-neurodegenerative benefts1–6. One specifc group of polyphenolic metabolites that is of a higher nutraceutical and ecological value and is widely distributed in higher plants are ellagitannins7–13. In brief, plants frst synthesize the molecular precursors of ellagitannins by enzymatic conversion of dehydro- shikimic acid into gallic acid, then galloylated glucose forms are generated along the biosynthetic pathway until neighboring galloyl groups undergo oxidative coupling to form the hexahydroxydiphenoyl (HHDP) group14. Te HHDP group has been leveraged in quantitative methods to measure ellagitannin content since hydrolysis liberates hexahydroxydiphenic acid that rapidly lactonizes into ellagic acid, irrespective of the chemical identity of the ellagitannin species15. However, this approach does not provide much insight into the structure of individ- ual ellagitannins, which is critical since the nutraceutical value of ellagitannins are regulated by their molecular identity. Ellagitannins are one of the most diverse groups of plant phenolics and their complexity presents a major hindrance to structural elucidation eforts6,16,17. Ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS/ MS) is one of the more efcient approaches to characterize plant metabolites, including phenolics, in complex extracts18–22. Mass spectrometry is a robust technique for many phenolics, but ellagitannins present signif- cant and unique challenges to current analytical measurement techniques as diferent numbers of galloyl and 1Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, Clemson University, Clemson, SC, 29631, USA. 2Janssen Research and Development, The Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson and Johnson, Spring House, PA, 19477, USA. 3University Bordeaux, ISM (CNRS-UMR 5255), 351 cours de la Libération, 33405, Talence Cedex, France. Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to N.T. (email: [email protected]) SCIENTIFIC REPORTS | (2018) 8:10399 | DOI:10.1038/s41598-018-27708-3 1 www.nature.com/scientificreports/ hexahydroxydiphenoyl subunits are esterifed with glucose, which complicates fragmentation spectra and ofen requires manual interpretation23–25. Although each species generates reproducible fragmentation spectra, many frst-generation product ions vary by isomeric form and automation of proposed structures to match existing spectral libraries becomes challenging without nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to ofer complimentary structural confrmation26,27. More recently, the number of studies focusing on compound-specifc fragmentation using multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) methods on triple-quadrupole mass spectrometers (QqQ-MS) has increased20–22,28–34. Although targeted assays are efective, unbiased discovery focused exclusively on ellagitan- nins can be improved by incorporating compound-specifc fragmentation for class association into new method designs. Focused large-scale discovery eforts to detect unknown ellagitannins have generally been unaddressed. Tis is the frst attempt to rapidly screen ellagitannins and systematically catalogue unique fragmentation spectra of isomers for potential inclusion in spectral libraries. Exponential increases in protein identifcation and reproducibility of peptide measurements in recent years is a direct consequence of substantial advances in mass spectrometer design35–41. Te unique instrument architec- ture of a quadrupole-Orbitrap-ion trap platform (Tribrid Orbitrap Fusion) has enabled proteomic applications with new measurement capabilities where multiple dissociation modes have been used in tandem42–45. Firstly, using refned and synthesized ellagitannin standards (Fig. S1), we leverage the high resolution and accurate mass capabilities of the Orbitrap mass analyzer to classify precursors with specifc product ions generated from higher energy collision dissociation (HCD) as ellagitannins46–52. Further, we utilized collision-induced dissociation (CID) to generate unique fragmentation spectra of isomeric variants to diferentiate between isomeric forms. Determination of constitutional or stereochemical isomerism was beyond the scope of this work and all isobaric species classifed as ellagitannins with steric diferences that resulted in unique CID fragmentation kinetics were retained under the label, isomer, although potential changes in conformational isomerism in the gas-phase can- not be addressed at this time. We demonstrate how a tandem HCD-CID experiment might be used to screen natural sources for ellagitannins using UHPLC-MS/MS by application of 22 method conditions from which an optimized data-dependent acquisition (DDA) that classifed 154 non-isomeric ellagitannins emerged. Results Fragmentation of Ellagitannins. Te tandem HCD-CID screen employed multiple modes of fragmenta- tion to minimize the number of discrete experiments required to classify precursors and then generate fragmen- tation spectra for isomeric variants. Precursors were frst subjected to HCD to generate characteristic product ions specifc to ellagitannins (Fig. 1a–c) for classifcation without the need for sequential fragmentation inherent within traditional ion trap type CID MSn approaches. Tis was followed by CID as it was better suited to gen- erate unique fragmentation spectra of any isomers observed given the inherent specifcity of the method since only frst-generation product ions were formed53–57. Tese two conditions formed the basis of the proposed tan- dem HCD-CID screen designed to detect ellagitannins and acquire fragmentation spectra that could be used to develop annotated spectral libraries. Infused standards were frst subjected to CID to illustrate the disadvantage of selective excitation of precur- sor ions to classify unknown compounds as ellagitannins. Although fragmentation of intact castalagin anions provided prominent 249/275/301 reporter ions (Fig. 1d), most of the other standards did not produce signifcant amounts of these reporters (Figs 1e and S2) and required subsequent MS3 of either 457 (Figs 1f and S3) or 487 and MS4 of 465 (Fig. S4) to generate sufcient quantities of 249/275/301 ions. Tabular summaries of these results (Tables S1–S5) and MS2 spectra of lower charge states (Fig. S5) are available in the Supplemental Information. Given that precursor classifcation was driven by the detection of these reporter ions, an approach to maximize the abundance of these reporters within MS2 spectra of any ellagitannin was prudent to maximize method sensitivity. Although in-source fragmentation has been employed previously for classifcation of ellagitannins based on observation of the ellagic acid 301 ion, that approach was less applicable since the isolation of precursor ions before fragmentation was found to be a more efective approach to properly associate unknown candidate species with the appearance of reporter ions given the potential coelution of diferent ellagitannins32. Modifcation of the linear ion trap (LIT) to maximize the formation of 249/275/301 ion populations in CID MS2 spectra through custom frmware was found to be impractal58–60. In contrast, HCD generated extensive fragmentation beyond the isolated precursor in MS2 spectra which maximized the accrual of all three reporter ions without