Recent advances in analytical strategies for mass spectrometry-based lipidomics

Abstract

Lipids are vital biological molecules and play multiple roles in cellular function of mammalian organisms such as cellular membrane anchoring, signal transduction, material trafficking and energy storage. Driven by the biological significance of lipids, lipidomics has become an emerging science in the field of omics. Lipidome in biological systems consists of hundreds of thousands of individual lipid molecules that possess complex structures, multiple categories, and diverse physicochemical properties assembled by different combinations of polar headgroups and hydrophobic fatty acyl chains. Such structural complexity poses a huge challenge for comprehensive lipidome analysis. Thanks to the great innovations in chromatographic separation techniques and the continuous advances in mass spectrometric detection tools, analytical strategies for lipidomics have been highly diversified so that the depth and breadth of lipidomics have been greatly enhanced. This review will present the current state of mass spectrometry-based analytical strategies including untargeted, targeted and pseudotargeted lipidomics. Recent typical applications of lipidomics in biomarker discovery, pathogenic mechanism and therapeutic strategy are summarized, and the challenges facing to the field of lipidomics are also discussed.

Optimization of a liquid chromatography-ion mobility-high resolution mass spectrometry platform for untargeted lipidomics and application to HepaRG cell extracts

“…Furthermore, the separation of isomers and isobars, and consequently, the acquisition of well-resolved fragmentation spectra is a challenge especially for lipidomics applications [103,104]. In order to obtain a less time-consuming but comprehensive platform, ion mobility spectrometry (IMS, a separation technique based on the mobility of ions through a buffer gas under the influence of an electric field) has been successfully integrated into LC-MS-based lipidomics and metabolomics workflows [96,105].…”

Mass Spectrometry-Based Zebrafish Toxicometabolomics: A Review of Analytical and Data Quality Challenges

“…Furthermore, the separation of isomers and isobars, and consequently, the acquisition of well-resolved fragmentation spectra is a challenge especially for lipidomics applications [ 103 , 104 ]. In order to obtain a less time-consuming but comprehensive platform, ion mobility spectrometry (IMS, a separation technique based on the mobility of ions through a buffer gas under the influence of an electric field) has been successfully integrated into LC-MS-based lipidomics and metabolomics workflows [ 96 , 105 ].…”

The state of the art in plant lipidomics

“…35 This issue was solved when an open-source data processing software called mass spectrometry-data independent analysis (MS-DIAL) software 101 was introduced to deconvolute the data accumulated by SWATH, which incorporated the LipidBlast 102 library to identify lipids. 101 At present, the SWATH acquisition method is immensely popular for untargeted lipidomic analyses 103 and has been used to analyze lipids in human platelets, 94 mouse plasma, 104 and human plasma. 105 More recently it was adapted for plant lipidomics to analyse lipids from diverse Arabidopsis tissues.…”