Post-column hydrogen-deuterium exchange technique to assist in the identification of small organic molecules by mass spectrometry

To improve the certainty that a specific small organic molecule has been detected in a given sample by high-resolution mass spectrometry, other techniques that give conclusive evidence about the chemical structure of a compound like nuclear magnetic resonance or complementary information on its composition such as hydrogen-deuterium exchange (HDX) are often necessary. This study presents a systematic investigation that aims to improve the applicability of post-column HDX for those purposes. Key parameters like mobile-phase flow rates, volume percentage of H2O in the mobile phase, and D2O addition flow rates were optimized to provide an isotopic pattern that allows the accurate determination of the number of exchangeable hydrogen atoms in small organic molecules. A loop injection setup was used to emulate chromatographic conditions in the optimization process, and trimethoprim, a widely used anti-infective, was used as test compounds for the experiments. As expected, results showed that deuteration percentage decreased with a higher mobile-phase flow rate and increased with higher D-2 O flow rate. The post-column HDX technique was then validated with extracts of samples of river water and plants separated by liquid chromatography in hydrophilic interaction or reversed-phase modes. Mass spectra showed a completely visible isotopic pattern that allowed assessing correctly and unambiguously the number of exchangeable hydrogens in the compounds of interest. This study shows that post-column HDX can be used as a complementary technique to identify unknown small organic molecules in complex matrices. The current paper proposes an efficient, cost-effective, versatile technique of HDX that is helpful to assign a unique structure to a given high-resolution mass spectrometry signal.