Development of metabolome extraction strategy for metabolite profiling of skin tissue

Changes in skin phenotypic characteristics are based on skin tissue. The study of the metabolic changes in skin tissue can help understand the causes of skin diseases and identify effective therapeutic interventions.

We aimed to establish and optimize a non-targeted skin metabolome extraction system for skin tissue metabolomics with high metabolite coverage, recovery, and reproducibility using gas chromatography/mass spectrometry.

The metabolites in skin tissues were extracted using eleven different extraction systems, which were designed using reagents with different polarities based on sequential solid-liquid extraction employing a two-step strategy and analyzed using gas chromatograph/mass spectrometry. The extraction efficiency of diverse solvents was evaluated by coefficient of variation (CV), multivariate analysis, metabolites coverage, and relative peak area analysis.

We identified 119 metabolites and the metabolite profiles differed significantly between the eleven extraction systems. Metabolites with high abundances in the organic extraction systems, followed by aqueous extraction, were involved in the biosynthesis of unsaturated fatty acids, while metabolites with high abundances in the aqueous extraction systems, followed by organic extraction, were involved in amino sugar and nucleotide sugar metabolism, and glycerolipid metabolism. MeOH/chloroform-H₂O and MeOH/H₂O-chloroform were the extraction systems that yielded the highest number of metabolites, while MeOH/acetonitrile (ACN)-H₂O and ACN/H₂O-IPA exhibited superior metabolite recoveries.

Our results demonstrated that our research facilitates the selection of an appropriate metabolite extraction approach based on the experimental purpose for the metabolomics study of skin tissue.