High Throughput Lipidomics Analysis by MALDI/Ion Mobility Mass Spectrometry

University Of Colorado Denver, Aurora CO

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Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The area of research termed metabolomics encompasses the study of a wide range of biomolecules that are products and substrates of enzymatic reactions within cells. One of the major subclasses of cellular metabolites are lipids, which they themselves are a diverse class of molecules that range from fatty acids, steroids, glycerolipids, glycerophospholipids, sphingolipids, and prenols. The measurement of lipids has significantly improved over the past decade, largely due to advances in mass spectrometry and various ancillary techniques. Lipids constitute an important class of compounds within the metabolomic sphere of interest because of the central role these molecules play, not only in separating compartments within cells through formation of lipid bilayers, but also through specific roles these molecules can play as precursor of signally molecules, targets for peroxidation chemistry, regulators of DNA expression, and even entities that are recognized by proteins that drive critical processes in normal cell biology. Within each class of lipids, there ae closely related molecules termed molecular species which increase the complexity of the lipid mixture and challenging analysis. Based upon recent advances we have made in using MALDI imaging mass spectrometry we propose that it will be possible to significantly increase the throughput of lipid analysis so that it will be possible to obtain important metabolomic information from several hundreds of samples per day on a fairly routine basis. Furthermore, we propose that this platform can be tuned to increase sensitivity for specific classes of lipids and used for high throughput lipidomic analysis to address specific questions concerning enzymatic pathways involved in lipid synthesis and metabolism. In part this approach will take advantage of the advances that have been made in the area of shotgun lipidomics coupled to the high throughput capability of MALDI mass spectrometry to yield both qualitative and quantitative information. Preliminary data shows that even untreated serum and plasma can yield information about the complex mixture of lipids present in this fluid without any further sample treatment except dilution. This data can be obtained within less than a minute in a form that can readily integrate into tools to automatically identify lipids as well as quantitate the abundance o lipids present. In order to carry out these studies, advanced mass spectrometric techniques will be used, including ion mobility technology to separate lipid ions from other compounds and impurities generated during the MALDI ionization process. The advanced mass spectrometric techniques to be developed can be implemented in many laboratories even without the ion mobility; however, ion mobility, as it becomes more widely available, provides a unique level of capability not currently present with other mass spectrometric system.