Chemoselective Metabolomics via a Modular Reactivity‐Encoding Platform
Understanding disease-associated metabolic reprogramming requires comprehensive interrogation of the chemically diverse metabolome. However, conventional liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) workflows analyze metabolites in a largely non-discriminatory manner, resulting in systematic underrepresentation of specific functional and reactivity classes due to heterogeneous ionization efficiencies and matrix interference. Here, we report a chemoselective metabolomics strategy based on a modular reactivity-encoding platform (MREP) that enables functional group-resolved stratification of complex metabolomes. Four orthogonally designed alkyne-tagged probes selectively derivatize carboxyl, carbonyl, amine, and thiol functionalities under compatible conditions. The encoded metabolites are subsequently immobilized via azide-alkyne cycloaddition onto a unified solid-phase capture resin, which simultaneously removes matrix components and installs a diagnostic reporter module. This integrated encoding-capture architecture achieves high reaction orthogonality, near-quantitative conversion, and robust quantitative performance across structurally diverse metabolites. The resulting triazole derivatives exhibit markedly enhanced ionization efficiencies and generate a universal reporter-ion, enabling confident submetabolome classification and reconstruction. Application to serum and liver tissues from mice substantially expands the detectable chemical space, yielding 7 208 features and 1 573 annotated metabolites across four functional group-defined layers. Collectively, this work establishes the MREP framework as a versatile platform for reactivity-resolved interrogation of complex small-molecule systems.
Authors
- Jia-Yue Liu
- Ru-Jie Yang
- Min Ren (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3232-7780)
- Jian‐Bo Wan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6750-2617)
- Hui Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9198-3951)
- Kang-hui Wang
- Rui‐Xue Hu
- Xin Tao
- Cang‐Man Zhang
- Zhuo‐Ling Zhong
- Jun‐Yi Zhou
Institutions
- University of Macau (MO)
- Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Advanced Science
- Published
- 2026-07-17
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1002/advs.76599
- Primary Topic
- Click Chemistry and Applications
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00