Creation of Tandem Mass Spectrometry Library of Synthetic Porphyrins

Porphyrins are essential in biological systems and beyond, with their functions ranging from photosynthesis to conducting electricity. Despite porphyrins' importance, their complexity is difficult to understand and appreciate. Organic laboratories are accumulating vast numbers of porphyrin structures with different properties, yet the variety of porphyrin structures is not captured within reference data. Using mass spectrophotometry, the wealth of information from porphyrins can be harvested. Exploring their chemistry via liquid chromatography-mass spectrophotometry (LC-MS) allows for improved understanding of porphyrin's overall structure and the differences between variants, ultimately, bridging the gap between porphyrin knowledge and published information. We used LC-MS to collect data on each porphyrin sample to produce a cohesive synthetic porphyrin library. Creating this library allows the public to have unlimited access to porphyrin data. The intent is to create a resource that can be coupled with other applications to help expand overall scientific knowledge. This, hopefully, will allow for each new porphyrin molecule to become detectable in LC-MS experiments and amenable to further exploration. With such information, determining the function of porphyrins within biological systems will be enhanced. In the future, we plan to use our library to determine whether the porphyrin data collected is present within biological systems. Overall, this library allows for advancements within biology by enabling broader discoveries of biological systems and beyond.