Sensitive untargeted metabolomics via 3-nitrophenylhydrazine derivatization maps gut microbiota-related metabolites across multiple mouse biological compartments

A 3-nitrophenylhydrazine derivatization-based untargeted metabolomics workflow identified 301 gut microbiota-related metabolites across five compartments in young and adult mice of both sexes.

• Why it matters: Systematic tracking of gut microbiota-related small molecules across host compartments is limited, and 3-NPH derivatives previously lacked identification against conventional spectral libraries.
• What they did: The authors combined 3-NPH derivatization with a purpose-built theoretical spectral library, then performed cross-compartment profiling and Spearman correlation analysis along gut-brain and gut-liver axes.
• The result: Compartment-specific metabolite compositions emerged, with fewer sex-associated differences in serum, liver, and brain than in the gut, and coordinated metabolite pairs linked to gut-brain and gut-liver axes.