Identification of plant hormones in intercellular microalgae cells and prospects of future studies

Abstract:

Plant hormones is one of trace endogenous compounds, which probably are the universal “languages” among microalgae cells. The screening and identification of plant hormones play a significant role in understanding the quorum sensing and intercellular communication mechanisms of microalgae cells. However, these hormones are usually in ultra-trace levels, with various species, complicate properties, and coexist with complex matrices. Thus, it is still very challenging to develop an effective method to identify the plant hormones, which includes verifying extraction procedures, improving detection sensitivity, reducing matrix effects and distinguishing isomers. In this work, we reviewed the present research status of plant hormones extraction and detection, especially focused on the methods and strategies on preparing plant hormones from various samples. The advantages and disadvantages of these pretreatment methods were systematically elaborated, from aspects of solid phase extraction, liquid extraction, magnetic solid phase extraction, liquid-liquid microextraction, etc. The detection methods, such as liquid chromatography, liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry, capillary electrophoresis, etc., were also compared. Then, we look forward to the prospects of tandem solid phase extraction method on extracting trace amounts of plant hormones from algae slurry. We considered that UPLC-LTQ-Orbitrap-MS method would be a promising technology for plant hormones detection. We aimed to provide some method references for the study of inter-algal microbial ecology.

Key words:microalgae, plant hormones, extraction, identification, LC-MS