This article is available online at http://www.jlr.org where it is important to detect multiple lipid classes [i.e., phospholipids and triacylglycerols (TAGs)] include food analysis ( 1-3 ), cell biology ( 4 ), health effects ( 5 ), taxonomy ( 6 ), and other fi elds ( 7-11 ). However, because of different chemistries, it is often diffi cult to characterize one class of lipids in the presence of another, especially using rapid methods. Elegant methods have been developed for quantitative analysis in complex mixtures, but they are typically diffi cult to implement and are time consuming ( 8,12 ). There has been much recent interest in rapid MALDI-MS analysis of lipids due to its speed of analysis and high sensitivity ( 5,13,14 ). Sample preparation is quick because derivatization is not required (i.e., no silylation), HPLC separation is not needed, limited buffer or salt contamination is tolerated ( 9, 11, 13 ), and spectra are easy to interpret ( 13 ).MALDI-MS has functioned as both a qualitative and semiquantitative approach to measure and track effected biology-related phenomena. For example, Lay et al. ( 15 ) demonstrated a rapid method for the analysis of edible oils by MALDI-MS that allowed determination of the relative abundances of TAGs with suffi cient accuracy to correctly identify blind-coded samples of various oils. Gidden et al. ( 16 ) have also reported using MALDI-MS to rapidly differentiate Escherichia coli and Bacillus subtilis based on the phospholipid profi le and monitor changes in lipid content during the growth phases of the bacteria. However, this rapid MALDI-MS approach cannot currently be applied to experiments requiring the detection of multiple lipid classes in an unresolved mixture. Attempts to use direct MALDI-MS on such complex mixtures invariably results in entire classes of lipids being missed because of suppression effects.