Limit of detection studies for application to natural product identification using high performance liquid chromatography coupled to nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy

In the pursuit of new natural products, the demand to rapidly identify compounds present, in ever decreasing amounts, in complex crude extracts has become a limiting factor. Despite improvements in HPLC-NMR hardware and pulse sequences, no extensive limit of detection (LOD) investigations have been reported for the acquisition of 2D NMR spectroscopic experiments acquired through HPLC-NMR. In this study the LOD for five key 1D and 2D NMR spectroscopic experiments have been established, using two reference compounds, including the on-flow (WET 1D proton), stop-flow (WET1D proton), gCOSY, HSQCAD and gHMBCAD NMR experiments. The LOD for all of the NMR experiments were within the range of 700 ng to 1 mg for the set of fixed experimental parameters implemented. For principle components in a complex multi-component mixture, this would allow for in situ compound identification. HPLC-NMR analysis was employed to investigate the principle components present in a marine brown alga crude extract, Cystophora subfarcinata.