A Metabolomics Approach Uncovers Differences between Traditional and Commercial Dairy Products in Buryatia (Russian Federation)

Commercially available and traditional dairy products differ in terms of their manufacturing processes. In this study, commercially available and traditionally fermented cheese, yogurt, and milk beverages were analyzed and compared. The metabolomic technique of ultra-performance liquid chromatography-quadrupole-time of flight mass spectrometry (UPLC-Q-TOF) in the MS(E) mode was used in combination with statistical methods, including univariate analysis and chemometric analysis, to determine the differences in metabolite profiles between commercially and traditionally fermented dairy products. The experimental results were analyzed statistically and showed that traditional and commercial dairy products were well differentiated in both positive and negative ion modes, with significant differences observed between the samples. After screening for metabolite differences, we detected differences between traditional milk beverages and yogurt and their commercial counterparts in terms of the levels of compounds such as l-lysine, l-methionine, l-citrulline, l-proline, l-serine, l-valine and l-homocysteine, and of short peptides such as Asp-Arg, Gly-Arg, His-Pro, Pro-Asn. The greatest difference between commercially available and traditional cheese was in the short peptide composition, as commercially available and traditional cheese is rich in short peptides.