Comparing and combining NMR spectroscopy and mass spectrometry in metabolomics

The high resolution nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and mass spectrometry (MS) is compared and combined with multivariate statistics that further drives the field of metabolomics. The complementary analytical features of NMR and MS increases the opportunities for both the methods to create more comprehensive metabolic profiling. The high sensitivity of MS makes it an important method for measuring metabolites in complex biosamples. The MS methods allows for reliable metabolite identification. Current challenges for MS-based metabolomics include the development of more robust methods for chromatographic separation, data reduction methods, and reduction of matrix effects including ion suppression. Compared to MS, The NMR spectroscopy yields relatively low-sensitivity measurements. NMR based metabolic profiling is considered to be performed successfully, as the method is highly quantitative and reproducible.