Metallo-thiolomics: Investigation of thiol peptide regulated metal homeostasis in plants and fungi by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry

This review gives an overview and critical evaluation about modern LC-MS techniques for identification and quantification of thiol peptides and their metal complexes in seed plants, algae and fungi. In analogy to other research fields we propose the term metallo-thiolomics for the global study of the entirety of thiol peptides and their metal complexes (metallo-thiolome) aiming at the elucidation of the thiol peptide regulated metal homeostasis. Off-line and on-line approaches based on liquid chromatography (LC) and electrospray tandem mass spectrometry (ESI-MS/MS) were mainly used for identification and quantification of thiol peptide apo-forms. The complementary application of inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) has demonstrated to be useful for the investigation of native metal-thiol peptide complexes. Furthermore, new quantification strategies via the element signal in ICP-MS will be presented. We critically discuss the impact of these approaches on the progress in plant biochemistry and highlight future trends and developments. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.