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LC-ESI-MS/MS Method for the Profiling of Glycerophospholipids and its Application to the Analysis of Tobacco Hairy Roots as Early Indicators of Phenol Pollution

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Abstract

The growing impact of organic and inorganic pollutants on the environment has led to the development of numerous strategies to counteract this effect. Among all, green technologies such as phytoremediation, has won relevance for its low cost as well as being an eco-friendly and sustainable process. In the past years, tobacco hairy roots (HRs) have become a good example of the effectiveness of plants as a tool for removing different pollutants. In this sense, the understanding of the intracellular mechanisms involved in the phytoremediation process has become of great interest. Glycerophospholipids (GLPs) are a key factor on intracellular signaling, given that they can activate different pathways, despite there is not enough information available about their levels and fluctuation under certain stress conditions. The aim of this work was to develop of a new chromatographic method coupled to electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (LC-ESI-MS/MS) with selected reaction monitoring (SRM) and data dependent scan detection for the evaluation of GLP profile after the exposure to phenol, to get a better understanding of lipids turnover and their effect on signaling pathways. This highly sensitive method allows the identification, separation and quantification in less than a 20 min-run of the eleven most relevant GPL species present in hairy tobacco root extracts after phenol exposure, and is suitable for evaluating small changes in GPL levels.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge CONICET (Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Tecnológicas), Universidad de Buenos Aires and Universidad Nacional de Río Cuarto for financial support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica, Departamento de Tecnología Farmacéutica, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Sabrina Flor, Cecilia Dobrecky, Valeria Tripodi & Silvia Lucangioli

  2. Universidad Nacional de Río Cuarto, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Físico-Químicas y Naturales, Departamento de Biología Molecular, Río Cuarto, Córdoba, Argentina

    Lucas Sosa Alderete & Elizabeth Agostini

  3. Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica, Departamento de Farmacología, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Cecilia Dobrecky

  4. Instituto de Biotecnología Ambiental y Salud (INBIAS-CONICET), Córdoba, Argentina

    Lucas Sosa Alderete & Elizabeth Agostini

  5. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Tecnológicas, CONICET, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Sabrina Flor, Valeria Tripodi & Silvia Lucangioli

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  1. Sabrina Flor
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  2. Lucas Sosa Alderete
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  3. Cecilia Dobrecky
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Correspondence to Silvia Lucangioli.

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Flor, S., Sosa Alderete, L., Dobrecky, C. et al. LC-ESI-MS/MS Method for the Profiling of Glycerophospholipids and its Application to the Analysis of Tobacco Hairy Roots as Early Indicators of Phenol Pollution. Chromatographia 84, 597–608 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10337-021-04034-x

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