Nuclear magnetic resonance in metabolomics

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is one of the most common and powerful techniques used in metabolomics. The inherent quantitative, nondestructive, and nonbiased properties, together with minimal sample preparation/manipulation make NMR a potent approach to any investigative metabolic study involving biological systems. NMR spectroscopy offers several unique monitoring opportunities such as extremely high reproducibility, relatively short experiment times, a wide range of available experiments (e.g., multidimensional and multinuclear based), and advanced highly automated robotic sample handling/exchange technologies enabling potentially hundreds of samples per instrument in a single day. In this chapter, we highlight the primary advantages and limitations of NMR spectroscopy, introduce the most commonly applied NMR experiments in metabolomics, and review some of the recent advances with selected examples of novel applications, such as high-resolution magic-angle spinning for tissue samples, and pure shift NMR method as an example of a promising new approach that can be used to overcome the overlapping of 1D NMR spectra. The main advantages of NMR spectroscopy with a particular focus on reproducibility are also presented.