When we eat deep-fried food, we expose ourselves to a complex mix of reactive chemical species. To protect us, our bodies neutralize these toxicants through glutathione conjugation, eventually excreting them in urine as mercapturic acid conjugates (MACs). However, mapping these urinary biomarkers has long been a challenge because many escape standard screening methods or aren’t registered in public databases.
Using SIRIUS molecular structure annotation, researchers identified 847 features—including 581 novel metabolites entirely missing from HMDB and PubChem. They proved that consuming deep-fried foods leads to a spike in urinary MACs derived from toxic reactive aldehydes, lipid oxidation products, and metabolic intermediates.
Y.-C. Chen et al. Anal. Chem. (2026) 10.1021/acs.analchem.5c08181
