Seawater analysis by ambient mass-spectrometry-based seaomics

Abstract

An analytical method coupled to multivariate statistical analysis was developed based on transmission-mode direct analysis in real-time quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (TM-DART-QTOF-MS) to interrogate lipophilic compounds in seawater samples without the need for desalinization. An untargeted metabolomics approach is addressed here as seaomics and was successfully implemented to discriminate the sea surface microlayer (SML) from the underlying water (ULW) samples (n=22, 10 paired samples) collected during a field campaign at the Cabo Verde islands during September–October 2017. A panel of 11 ionic species detected in all samples allowed sample class discrimination by means of supervised multivariate statistical models. Tentative identification of the species enriched in the SML samples suggests that fatty alcohols, halogenated compounds, and oxygenated boron-containing organic compounds are available at the surface for air–water transfer processes. A subset of SML samples (n=5) were subjected to on-site experiments during the campaign by using a lab-to-field approach to test their secondary organic aerosol (SOA) formation potency. The results from these experiments and the analytical seaomics strategy provide a proof of a concept that can be used for an approach to identifying organic molecules involved in aerosol formation processes at the air–water interface.