Rapid in vivo determination of tetrodotoxin in pufferfish (Fugu) muscle by solid-phase microextraction coupled to high-performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry

Tetrodotoxin (TTX) is one of the most toxic substances of non-protein in nature. In present study, a rapid and sensitive method based on in vivo solid-phase microextraction (SPME) coupled to liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) was developed to detect the endogenous TTX in pufferfish (Fugu). Fiber evaluation experiments demonstrated that, compared with the commercial PDMS and PA fibers, the home-made electrospun PS@PDA-GA fibers exhibited much better extraction performance towards to TTX in water (120 times and 20 times, respectively), under the optimized conditions. Then, the home-made SPME fibers were employed to extract TTX in spiked homogeneous fish muscle samples, and a LC-MS-MS was used for the analysis. The reproducibilities (RSDs of inter and intra fiber were 12.1%, and 7.9% respectively), linear range (10-1000 ng g(-1), R-2=0.9963) and sensitivity (the LOD was 2.3 ng g(-1)) of the method were found to be excellent and satisfactory for further in vivo experiments. Especially the LOD of the established method is lower than the National Standard Method of China (GB/T 23217-2008, LOD 50 ng g(-1)). Subsequently, the method was successfully applied to detect the TTX in the dorsal muscle of living pufferfish, and the accuracy was verified with traditional liquid extraction (LE) method. In general, this is the first study to detect TTX in pufferfish by in vivo sampling method, which provided a promising alternative method for the studies of TTX, and also advanced the implementation of SPME for more in vivo studies.