Carbamazepine Uptake and Metabolization by Lavandula Dentata, Juncus Sp., and Salicornia Europaea

Introduction: Software has been used to predict metabolic pathways for possible ‘ex-pected’ and ‘unexpected’ metabolites based on their m/z and fragmentation patterns from low- and high-fragmentation mass spectra of plants subjected to carbamazepine uptake has been used. Methods: Three plants with high prevalence in the natural protected area of Doñana National Park (Spain) were irrigated with three aqueous carbamazepine solutions (10 ng‧mL-1, 700 ng‧mL,-1 and 10 μg‧mL-1). Periodically, stems, leaves, and roots were sampled and analyzed. Total car-bamazepine uptake throughout the assay was evaluated and discussed, demonstrating a clear de-pendence on plant species/part, irrigation solution concentration, and assay duration. Additional-ly, chromatographic analysis was performed using a quadrupole time-of-flight (Q-TOF) mass spectrometer, recording simultaneous low- and high-fragmentation mass spectra for further com-putational processing with MetabolynxTM software. Results: Confirmation was achieved by analyzing the high-energy spectra obtained at the charac-teristic retention times and fragmentation pattern of each compound. Discussion: Several potential carbamazepine metabolites corresponding to various metabolic pathways were identified, and, where possible, their relative abundances was discussed. Conclusion: The use of computational tools like MetabolynxTM has proven to be useful for stud-ies involving the identification of metabolites and/or the confirmation of metabolic pathways in the studied plants.