DQF J-RES NMR: Suppressing the singlet signals for improving the J-RES spectra from complex mixtures

Abstract Two-dimensional J -RESolved spectroscopy ( J -RES) finds routine use in metabolomics for reducing signal overlap as it separates chemical shift and multiplet information along two frequency axes. However, only magnitude mode of the experiment is practical which prevents exploitation of its full resolving power. Tailing from high-intensity metabolite peaks often obscure nearby low-intensity metabolite peaks which leads to ambiguity in assignment of metabolites. Absorptive mode J -RES spectroscopy offers better-resolving power but comes at the cost of either sensitivity or complicated post-processing. Quite often for certain complex mixtures such as bio-fluids some components of the mixture display intense singlet signals which dominate the whole spectrum resulting in less reliable detection of weaker metabolite signals. Multi-frequency presaturation could suppress these intense singlets but will also remove the useful weaker multiplet peaks which are either totally eclipsed with the intense singlets or very close in frequency. We show that by using a double quantum filter (DQF) in magnitude mode J -RES technique, the intensity of the strong singlet metabolite peaks can be reduced relative to the intensity of the sparsely present multiplet metabolite signals. This approach leads to the identification of many weak intensity multiplet peaks which are otherwise undetected due to their overlap with intense singlet peaks in regular J -RES as well as 1D 1 H spectra. Although the improved intensity of most of the weaker peaks relative to the strong singlet peaks is observed, some multiplets can disappear due to the delay-dependent modulation of the signals by the DQF. A few DQF J -RES spectra recorded with different DQF delays, therefore, produce better assignment when analyzed together. The technique is demonstrated on a mixture of eight compounds, human urine, and plant extract samples.