Highlighting mass spectrometric fragmentation diffrences and similarities between hydroxycinnamoyl-quinic acids and hydroxycinnamoyl-isocitric acids

Abstract

Plants contain a myriad of metabolites which exhibit diverse biological activities. However, in-depth analyses of these natural products with current analytical platforms remains an undisputed challenge due to the multidimensional chemo-diversity of these molecules, amplifid by both isomerization and conjugation. In this study, we looked at molecules such as hydroxyl-cinnamic acids (HCAs), which are known to exist as positional and geometrical isomers conjugated to diffrent organic acids namely quinic- and isocitric acid.