Acyl-Coenzyme As (acyl-CoAs), as intermediates to incorporate carboxylic acids into the bioactive metabolic network, play a crucial part in multiple cellular process, such as fatty acid elongation, and biosynthesis and remodeling of lipids. However, the profiling of acyl-CoAs in untargeted metabolomics is restricted by the low abundances, the poor chromatographic behavior, the low mass spectrometry (MS) sensitivity, and a high diversity of the acyl structure. 

Researchers from Wuhan Botanical Garden and Wuhan Textile University, etc. created an 8-(diazomethyl) quinoline derived acyl-CoA in silico mass spectral library, which contained 33,344 high-resolution tandem mass spectra of 8,336 acyl-CoA species. The library facilitated the sensitive, high-throughput and automatic annotation of acyl-CoA without additional authentic standards. False positive annotations were further screened by an eXtreme Gradient Boosting based retention time prediction model. 

The library facilitated the profiling of 53 acyl-CoA species in multiple organs of the aging mouse, specifically 38 fatty acyl-CoAS, 12 oxidized fatty acyl-CoAs and 3 novel nonfatty acyl-CoAs. 

The study revealed the unique distribution pattern and aging impact of different acyl-CoA species, facilitating the revealing of the organ-specific function of acyl-CoAs and the role of different acyl-CoA species during aging.

Relevant results have been published in Analytical Chemistry entitled “An 8-(Diazomethyl) Quinoline Derivatized Acyl-CoA in Silico Mass Spectral Library Reveals the Landscape of Acyl-CoA in Aging Mouse Organs”.

Dr. YU Jinhui and the graduate student GUO Menghao are the co-first authors, Prof. DING Jun and Prof. FENG Yuqi are the corresponding authors. This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation, and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities.