Advanced Mass Spectrometry Methods for Analysis of Lipids from Photosynthetic Organisms

Abstract

A review. The anal. of lipids is tech. very challenging, not only due to the large no. of various classes of compds. provided by the cell, but also due to the enormous heterogeneity of these various classes. Esp. plants with their large pigment content and their high degree of polyunsatd. acyl residues make lipid anal. in this system even more complicated. Due to this high complexity, more and more sophisticated large-scale lipid-anal. systems have been developed, intended for the anal. of the so-called "lipidome", that is the entire lipid compn. of a cell or a whole organism. These methods often consist of various building blocks, which show interlaced modularity. The two basic elements of a lipidomic anal. are an efficient extn. procedure and a sensitive detection system. In addn. to these two basic elements, depending on the anal. question, addnl. sepn. and sample purifn. procedures can be introduced. Mass spectrometry (MS)-based techniques are at the forefront of lipidomic anal. These extremely sensitive and accurate detection methods are applied to investigate all kinds of lipid. Their application, in combination with various plant-specific techniques of extn. and sepn., including solid-phase extn., thin-layer chromatog. and high-performance liq. chromatog. are presented in this chapter. Most of the MS-based technologies for lipid profiling of partially polar lipids rely on electrospray ionization, while more apolar lipids, like sterols, can be ionized by techniques, such as atm. pressure chem. ionization. A no. of various applications employing these mass spectrometric methods will be discussed. Finally combinations of various sepn. and detection technologies, so-called hyphenated approaches, such as high-performance liq. chromatog. coupled to mass spectrometry or gas chromatog. coupled to time of flight or quadrupole mass spectrometry, are introduced and their suitability for lipid anal. are discussed. [on SciFinder(R)]