LC-MS-MS Metabolomics
Introduction
Metabolomics is the large scale identification and quantification of small molecules (<1500 Da) across multiple biological samples (Dunn et al., 2005; Kirpich et al., 2018). The analysis provides data on a diverse group of primary & secondary metabolites, hormones, and metabolic intermediates that include alcohols, carbohydrates, lipids, nucleic bases, and amino acids. Originally used in medical research, metabolomics has only recently been applied in archaeology (Eusebio, et al., 2017; Lanehart, et al., 2018b). One drawback currently facing untargeted metabolomics is that many of the recovered compounds of the metabolome are unknown at this time.
Our data included results from two types of metabolic analyses: 1) an untargeted or global metabolomics which produced a very large number of molecules comprised of many different compounds and 2) a targeted metabolomics which provided data on the hydrolyzed fatty acid content in both samples. Sampling of the pig bone (50 mg drilled) and ding sherd (50 mg pinched and crushed) was done at the Laboratory of Archaeological Science, USF and the samples were sent to the Southeast Center for Integrated Metabolomics (SECIM) at the University of Florida. Subsequent extraction, spectrometric analyses, and identification of molecules were performed at SECIM. Statistical analyses of the untargeted results were performed using SECIM Tools in Galaxy.