Abstract
While analytical techniques in natural products research massively shifted to liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry, lichen chemistry remains reliant on limited analytical methods, Thin Layer Chromatography being the gold standard. To meet the modern standards of metabolomics within lichenochemistry, we announce the publication of an open access MS/MS library with 250 metabolites, coined LDB for Lichen DataBase, providing a comprehensive coverage of lichen chemodiversity. These were donated by the Berlin Garden and Botanical Museum from the collection of Siegfried Huneck to be analyzed by LC-MS/MS. Spectra at individual collision energies were submitted to MetaboLights (https://www.ebi.ac.uk/metabolights/MTBLS999) while merged spectra were uploaded to the GNPS platform (CCMSLIB00004751209 to CCMSLIB00004751517). Technical validation was achieved by dereplicating three lichen extracts using a Molecular Networking approach, revealing the detection of eleven unique molecules that would have been missed without LDB implementation to the GNPS. From a chemist’s viewpoint, this database should help streamlining the isolation of formerly unreported metabolites. From a taxonomist perspective, the LDB offers a versatile tool for the chemical profiling of newly reported species.
Highlights
Background & SummaryIn the 19th century, lichens were still considered to be lower plants but around the time the general concept of symbiosis was being developed, they were found to be associations between a fungus and an alga[1,2]
TLC was later introduced in an attempt to dereplicate more precisely lichen metabolites and standardized migration solvent mixtures were designed in 1970 by Culberson & Kristinsson[6], facilitating chemical profiling and identification of species by comparison to co-eluted standards
Lichen chemicals were historically used as taxonomic markers, the delimitation of species based solely on chemistry was treated with caution
Summary
In the 19th century, lichens were still considered to be lower plants but around the time the general concept of symbiosis was being developed, they were found to be associations between a fungus and an alga[1,2]. Efforts have been made to update Huneck’s and Yoshimura’s compendium[39,40,41,42] and databases geared towards chemotaxonomy of lichens have arisen, but these are based on a limited number of metabolites, mainly major compounds accessible by TLC detection[43,44,45] Aside from their traditional use in chemotaxonomy, lichen metabolites, most notably polyketides, have been known for long to be produced by these organisms and to have a variety of bioactive properties[30,46,47,48,49,50,51,52]. The most common appendages in lichen metabolites are represented, i.e. depsides, depsidones, dibenzofurans, diphenylethers, pulvinic acid derivatives, quinones, xanthones and terpenes (Fig. 1) This database sets a new standard of dereplication in lichen chemistry, regarding both detection sensitivity and structure identification reliability. This data descriptor announces the deposition in public repositories of the LDB on the GNPS57 and Metabolights[58,59] servers
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