Monoacylglycerol Analysis Using MS/MSALL Quadruple Time of Flight Mass Spectrometry

Abstract

Monoacylglycerols (MAGs) are structural and bioactive metabolites critical for biological function. Development of facile tools for measuring MAG are essential to understand its role in different diseases and various pathways. A data-independent acquisition method, MS/MSALL, using electrospray ionization (ESI) coupled quadrupole time of flight mass spectrometry (MS), was utilized for the structural identification and quantitative analysis of individual MAG molecular species. Compared with other acylglycerols, diacylglycerols (DAG) and triacylglycerols (TAG), MAG characteristically presented as a dominant protonated ion, [M + H]+, and under low collision energy as fatty acid-like fragments due to the neutral loss of the glycerol head group. At low concentrations (<10 pmol/µL), where lipid-lipid interactions are rare, there was a strong linear correlation between ion abundance and MAG concentration. Moreover, using the MS/MSALL method the major MAG species from human plasma and mouse brown and white adipose tissues were quantified in less than 6 min. Collectively, these results demonstrate that MS/MSALL analysis of MAG is an enabling strategy for the direct identification and quantitative analysis of low level MAG species from biological samples with high throughput and sensitivity.

FGF19, FGF21, and an FGFR1/β-Klotho-Activating Antibody Act on the Nervous System to Regulate Body Weight and Glycemia

“…Lipid species were identified based on their molecular mass and fragmentation patterns and verified by lipid standards. Hepatic DAG was quantified as described (Gao et al, 2016; Gao et al, 2017; Simons et al, 2012). Briefly, liver samples were homogenized and extracted with a modified Bligh-Dyer extraction.…”

An efficient and comprehensive plant glycerolipids analysis approach based on high‐performance liquid chromatography–quadrupole time‐of‐flight mass spectrometer

“…The analysis platform of the mass spectrometry represented by ESI-MS/MS is widely used in the composition analysis of various biological tissue extracts (Bilgin et al, 2016;Cheong et al, 2014;Dennis, 2009;Han & Gross, 2005;Han et al, 2006;Horn & Chapman, 2012;Merrill, Sullards, Allegood, Kelly, & Wang, 2005;Shiva et al, 2013;Welti et al, 2002). Methods using neutral loss/precursor scan or multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) data collection are favored in the analysis of lipidome for their excellent performance in reliability and sensitivity (Gao et al, 2016;Simons et al, 2012). However, instrument operation requires careful optimization, multiple sample injections, and undesirable running time to achieve comprehensive analysis of phospholipids, galactolipids, and non-polar TAGs/ DAGs (Groessl et al, 2014;Welti et al, 2002).…”

“…Electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (ESI-MS/MS) represents the most popular and classic technique in the area of lipidomics analysis which is well known for its sensitivity and accuracy (Devaiah et al, 2006;Tarazona, Feussner, & Feussner, 2015;Welti et al, 2002). There are two alternative modes, direct infusion and liquid chromatography (LC), to introduce sample in the ESI source (Gao et al, 2016(Gao et al, , 2018Simons et al, 2012). A direct infusion approach (also called shotgun lipidomics) based on electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS/MS) using precursor, and neutral loss scan mode was developed by Welti et al (2002) which has been widely used in plant lipids analysis (Devaiah et al, 2006;Han, Yang, Yang, Cheng, & Gross, 2006;Welti et al, 2002;Welti, Wang, & Williams, 2003).…”

“…Triple quadrupole-based ESI-MS/MS approach with or without LC separation using multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) mode is another proven method to comprehensively analyze targeted lipids (Brugger, 2014;Cheong, Wenk, & Shui, 2014;Junza, Amatya, Barron, & Barbosa, 2011;Vu et al, 2014). Conventional -based ESI-MS/MS approaches require preselection characteristic ions and are highly targeted (Gao et al, 2016(Gao et al, , 2018Simons et al, 2012). In addition, they employed deconvolution in their quantification schemes, because the detected intensities include signal contributed by isotopomers, and, in some cases, doubly charged lipids and their isotopomers (Gao et al, 2018;Groessl et al, 2014;Han et al, 2006;Welti et al, 2002Welti et al, , 2003.…”

“…However, the quantification is relative and many lipid species were missing in their analysis (Li et al, 2017;Zheng et al, 2017;Zhou et al, 2017). A developed analysis technique using a hybrid quadrupole high-resolution time of flight (TripleTOF) and data collection with MS/MS ALL scan based on data-independent acquisition greatly improves the coverage of lipids (Gao et al, 2017(Gao et al, , 2016(Gao et al, , 2018. TripleTOF is built for fast scanning, high resolution, and accuracy, and its sensitivity is comparable to mass spectrometer (Gao et al, 2016;Zheng et al, 2017).…”