Cross-Species Comparison of Metabolomics to Decipher the Metabolic Diversity in Ten Fruits

Fruits provide humans with multiple kinds of nutrients and protect humans against worldwide nutritional deficiency. Therefore, it is essential to understand the nutrient composition of various fruits in depth. In this study, we performed LC-MS-based non-targeted metabolomic analyses with ten kinds o...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Jinwei Qi, Kang Li, Yunxia Shi, Yufei Li, Long Dong, Ling Liu, Mingyang Li, Hui Ren, Xianqing Liu, Chuanying Fang, Jie Luo
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2021-03-01
Series:Metabolites
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2218-1989/11/3/164
Description
Summary:Fruits provide humans with multiple kinds of nutrients and protect humans against worldwide nutritional deficiency. Therefore, it is essential to understand the nutrient composition of various fruits in depth. In this study, we performed LC-MS-based non-targeted metabolomic analyses with ten kinds of fruit, including passion fruit, mango, starfruit, mangosteen, guava, mandarin orange, grape, apple, blueberry, and strawberry. In total, we detected over 2500 compounds and identified more than 300 nutrients. Although the ten fruits shared 909 common-detected compounds, each species accumulated a variety of species-specific metabolites. Additionally, metabolic profiling analyses revealed a constant variation in each metabolite’s content across the ten fruits. Moreover, we constructed a neighbor-joining tree using metabolomic data, which resembles the single-copy protein-based phylogenetic tree. This indicates that metabolome data could reflect the genetic relationship between different species. In conclusion, our work enriches knowledge on the metabolomics of fruits, and provides metabolic evidence for the genetic relationships among these fruits.
ISSN:2218-1989