Abstract: A gas chromatography/time of flight-mass spectrometer(GC/TOF-MS) method of metabonomic analysis for small mouse serum was established. With optimizing derivatization, 269 peaks of GC/TOF-MS chromatogram were detected. Among them, 46 peaks with the similarity over 800 were identified for endogenous metabolites. 18 endogenous metabolites were selected randomly to evaluate the precision and stability of the method, and 14 mixture standard of amino acids were selected for quantitative analysis. The results showed that linearities of the 14 mixture standards were good over the range of 2.78—113.20 ng/μL, precision for intra-day and inter-day tests were satisfying, and the precision values were all below 15% for 18 endogenous metabolites. Since trimethyl-silyl(TMS) derivatization of monosaccharides often results in the formation of multiple peaks, oximation can resolve the problem smoothly. The results suggest that the method could be usefully applied to metabolomic studies, by data processing, biological markers can be identified and a new way can be presented for disease diagnosis.

Key words: Gas chromatography/time of flight-mass spectrometer(GC/TOF-MS), Oximation, Silylation, Metabolomics