Did you know that plants are the only kingdom that can produce true blue pigments? The blue color you see in animals and insects is not a pigment. Their blue color comes from surface structures that bend light to appear blue. Even in plants, blue is a rare pigment as less than 10% of species of flowering plants produce blue or violet flowers. These pigments are known as anthocyanins, and they are responsible for the bright blues, purples, pinks, and reds of fruits and flowers. Recent interest in anthocyanins has been driven by their versatility in applications in food science, botany, horticulture, and plant physiology.

We are interested in learning more about the unique patterns of glycosylation and acylation of pigments in different flowering species, such as Viola sororia, the common North American meadow violet. We also aim to understand pigment biosynthesis by identifying proteins involved in the flavonoid biosynthetic pathway. We perform our pigment and protein characterization experiments using mass spectrometry, specifically UPLC-ESI-MS/MS in positive and negative ionization modes. Our methodology involves the optimization of pigment and protein extractions, chromatographic and mass spectrometric parameters, and MS data analysis. Also, we have created a program (LUCID-lcms.org) that enables pigment characterization of flavonoids and other metabolites and hope to facilitate higher-throughput characterization of more flowering species.