Flavonoids form a group of secondary metabolites ubiquitous in the plant kingdom. These compounds are synthesized in plant tissues on the phenylalanine lyase pathway and may be divided into several groups, differing in their skeleton: flavones, flavonols, isoflavons, flavanons, flavan-3-ols (catechins), anthocyanidins, aurons, and chalcons. All these compounds occurring in plant tissues may be hydroxylated, methylated or sulphated and are substituted with different groups such as sugars or acyls. More than 6000 compounds differing in their chemical and biological properties belong to this group. Fast and precise methods of identification and quantitative analysis of all these plant constituents are necessary because of their important biological functions and different applications of plant products. Instrumental analytical methods used in this purpose are described in the paper. Special concern is directed to particularly useful hyphenated chromatographic techniques such as HPLC C/MS, HPLC/NMR, GC/MS, and CE/MS.
Identification of gene functions needs information from different molecular levels: transcriptome, proteome and metabolome. Chromatographic techniques combined with different types of detectors are methods of choice for secondary metabolites profiling. Mass spectrometry is one of the best methods for natural products identification due to its high selectivity and sensitivity. However, physico-chemical properties of secondary metabolites present in plant species have very strong influence on the applicability of chromatographic techniques for separation of different classes of organic compounds present in the samples extracted from plant tissue. There does not exist an analytical method capable for separation and identification of all metabolites present in plant tissue during a single analysis. This article describes chromatographic systems combined with different mass spectrometric techniques for identification of different classes of secondary metabolites present in plant material.
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