Quantitative Analysis of Nucleoside Triphosphate Pools in Mouse Muscle Using Hydrophilic Interaction Liquid Chromatography Coupled with Tandem Mass Spectrometry Detection.

Defects in deoxyribonucleoside triphosphate (dNTP) metabolism are associated with a number of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) depletion syndromes (MDS). These disorders affect the muscles, liver, and brain, and the concentrations of dNTPs in these tissues are already normally low and are, therefore, difficult to measure. Thus, information about the concentrations of dNTPs in tissues of healthy animals and animals with MDS are important for mechanistic studies of mtDNA replication, analysis of disease progression, and the development of therapeutic interventions. Here, we present a sensitive method for the simultaneous analysis of all four dNTPs as well as all four ribonucleoside triphosphates (NTPs) in mouse muscles using hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography coupled with triple quadrupole mass spectrometry. The simultaneous detection of NTPs allows them to be used as internal standards for the normalization of dNTP concentrations. The method can be applied for measuring dNTP and NTP pools in other tissues and organisms.