Conclusion
We putatively identified 804 metabolites, with glycerolipids, glycerophospholipids and fatty acyls being the most prominent superclasses (> 50% of identified metabolites). Among the polar metabolome, carbohydrates and amino acid-derivatives were the most abundant. We show that 8% of the metabolome is affected by melt duration, with a pronounced decrease in betaine membrane lipids and pigment precursors, and an increase in phospholipids. Controlled fast melting at 10 °C resulted in the highest consistency, and is our recommendation for future supraglacial metabolomics studies.
Methods
We employed untargeted, high-resolution mass spectrometry and tested the effect of sample melt temperature (10, 15, 20 °C) and processing delay (up to 49 h) on the metabolome and lipidome, and complemented this approach with cell counts (FlowCam), photophysiological analysis (PAM) and diversity characterization.