Metabolic profilings of rat INS-1 β-cells under changing levels of essential amino acids.

Application of mass spectrometry enables the detection of metabolic differences between organisms with different nutritional settings. Divergence in the metabolic fingerprints of rat pancreatic INS-1 β-cells were systematically captured with regard to ten individual essential amino acid (EAA) availability. A high-resolution tandem mass spectrometry system coupled to liquid chromatography produced a horizontal comparison of metabolic profilings of β-cells with individual EAA elevated to 10 mmol/L by turn or removal individual EAA from the medium one by one. Quality control samples were injected at regular intervals throughout the analytical run to monitor and evaluate the stability of the system. The raw data of samples and reference compounds including study protocols have been deposited in the open metabolomics database MetaboLights to enable efficient reuse of the datasets, such as investigating the difference in metabolic process between diverse EAAs as well as screening and verifying potential metabolites affecting insulin secretion and β-cell function.