PSYCHE—A Valuable Experiment in Plant NMR-Metabolomics

Abstract

1 H-NMR is a very reproducible spectroscopic method and, therefore, a powerful tool for the metabolomic analysis of biological samples. However, due to the high complexity of natural samples, such as plant extracts, the evaluation of spectra is difficult because of signal overlap. The new NMR “Pure Shift” methods improve spectral resolution by suppressing homonuclear coupling and turning multiplets into singlets. The PSYCHE (Pure Shift yielded by Chirp excitation) and the Zangger–Sterk pulse sequence were tested. The parameters of the more suitable PSYCHE experiment were optimized, and the extracts of 21 Hypericum species were measured. Different evaluation criteria were used to compare the suitability of the PSYCHE experiment with conventional1 H-NMR. The relationship between the integral of a signal and the related bin value established by linear regression demonstrates an equal representation of the integrals in binned PSYCHE spectra compared to conventional1 H-NMR. Using multivariate data analysis based on both techniques reveals comparable results. The obtained data demonstrate that Pure Shift spectra can support the evaluation of conventional1 H-NMR experiments.