脂组学及其研究进展

脂质的生物功能具有多样性,其代谢与多种疾病的发生、发展密切相关.脂质的分析量化对研究疾病发生机理和诊断治疗,以及医药研发有非常重要的生物学意义.分析技术的快速发展,特别是质谱及其联用技术的运用,促使脂质分析不断完善.脂组学就是对生物样本中脂质的整体分析,是代谢组学的重要组成部分,能够促进代谢组学的发展.本文就脂质的生物功能、脂质分析以及脂组学的研究现状作简要评述.     

Paternò-Büchi(PB)反应与串联质谱结合实现不饱和脂质精确结构解析

脂质在一系列关键生命过程中发挥着重要作用。结构决定功能,因此脂质结构解析与功能研究一直受到研究者的关注。尽管质谱已成为脂质分析的最常用技术之一,但脂质的精细结构解析仍面临诸多挑战。为解决上述问题,将Paternò-Büchi(PB)光化学反应与串联质谱相结合,实现了不饱和脂质中碳碳双键■的定位以及不饱和脂质■位置异构体的定量分析。此外,该技术可与鸟枪法、液相色谱-质谱和质谱成像等技术联用,用于复杂生物样品中脂质的分析。     

常压电离质谱在脂质精确结构解析中的研究进展

脂类化合物的结构和功能与细胞生理过程密切相关,脂质结构的精确解析对探索脂质的生物学功能起着至关重要的作用。常压电离质谱技术的出现为常压敞开环境条件下的原位、实时、直接、快速生物脂质分析和组学研究提供了重要的手段。随着常压电离质谱技术在脂质分析和脂质组学研究的不断深入,对脂质结构特别是碳碳双键(C‖C)位置的精细解析就显得尤为重要。该文详细阐述了基于Paternò-Büchi反应、环氧化、臭氧诱导解离、紫外光解离的常压电离质谱技术,以及这些技术在脂质C‖C位置精确鉴定及异构体区分的应用,并展望了常压电离质谱在脂质化合物精确结构解析方面的发展趋势。     

化学计量学方法在脂质组学数据解析中的应用

脂质组学是依赖于分析技术而发展的一门新兴学科,用于全面表征与基因调控、蛋白表达、脂质代谢密切相关的脂质分子,揭示脂质在各种生命活动中的作用机制和代谢途径网络。随着质谱及其联用技术进一步发展和完善,脂质组学逐渐向快速、自动化和高通量的方向发展,而大规模的脂质组数据分析已成为脂质组学研究领域的一大难点。化学计量学主要应用于脂质组学中的基线校正和背景扣除、信号峰识别、同位素分布解析、统计分析等过程,因此,基于化学计量学方法的脂质组学数据自动化解析策略成为研究者关心的热点。该文对近年来化学计量学在脂质组学数据解析中的应用进行了综述,并对基于化学计量学的脂质组学数据解析的未来发展进行了展望。     

表面修饰探针纳升电喷雾质谱脂质组学对大型溞和蚤状溞的快速鉴别

采用表面修饰探针敞开式纳升电喷雾质谱技术建立了脂质组学方法, 以实现溞属(Daphnia)生物大型溞和蚤状溞的快速鉴别. 采用微尺度表面修饰探针直接从Daphnia体内萃取和富集出脂质化合物, 然后在常压敞开条件下进行纳升电喷雾质谱分析, 利用高分辨率质谱仪获得脂质指纹图谱并进行脂质种类和结构鉴定. 采用该方法获得了大型溞和蚤状溞的脂质指纹图谱, 并研究了大型溞和蚤状溞体内的脂质组成特征. 通过结合化学计量学手段实现了大型溞和蚤状溞的快速区分, 并鉴定了相关的生物标志物. 结果表明, 所建立的微萃取探针纳升电喷雾质谱脂质组学方法具有分析速度快、 灵敏度高的优点, 可用于Daphnia属生物的快速鉴定和识别.     

基于质谱技术识别脂质双键位置的研究进展

脂质在能量贮存和信号传递方面发挥着巨大作用,同时还是生物膜的主要组成成分。不饱和脂质双键位置不同,生理学意义和生物学功能会有很大差异,因此脂质双键位置的识别至关重要。质谱具有灵敏快速、准确度高等优势,已成为脂质结构研究的重要方法。近年来,不同原理的电离技术与选择性衍生反应迅速发展起来,与质谱相结合已广泛应用于多种脂质双键位置的识别。本文主要对这些新型质谱技术进行总结,并展望了其未来发展趋势。     

脂质组学分析中样品前处理技术的研究进展

脂质不仅是细胞膜的主要组成部分,还参与一些生命活动如能量存储、信号传导等,在生命体中发挥着重要作用。近年来,越来越多的研究表明脂质的变化与一些重大疾病的发生发展密切相关,脂质组学研究对理解疾病的发生机制及过程具有重要意义。在脂质分析过程中,由于样品基质的干扰或被分析物浓度的限制,通常需要对样品进行前处理,以得到最佳的分析性能。该文综述了脂质组学分析中的样品前处理技术,包括脂质的提取方法（如液液萃取、固相萃取等）和针对不同类脂质的化学衍生化技术在各领域,尤其是生命分析和代谢组学中的应用,并对脂质组学分析中的样品前处理技术的发展进行了展望。     

基于色谱-质谱联用的脂质分析样品前处理技术研究进展

脂质作为细胞膜和亚细胞膜的主要结构成分,在能量来源、细胞信号传导等多种生物学过程中发挥着重要作用。近年来,脂质分析受到越来越多的关注,其中色谱-质谱联用技术在脂质分析中占据主导地位。由于样品基质复杂,样品前处理有富集痕量物质和减少基质干扰的作用,成为脂质分析中的一个关键步骤。该文综述了近年来基于色谱-质谱联用技术的脂质分析中样品前处理技术的研究进展和应用,对各种样品前处理技术进行了阐述和总结。基于液相的萃取方法有液-液萃取和单一有机溶剂萃取。基于固相的萃取方法包括固相萃取和固相微萃取。场辅助萃取方法包括超临界流体萃取、加压流体萃取、微波辅助萃取和超声辅助萃取。此外,还介绍了在线联用样品前处理方法和用于活体分析的样品前处理方法。最后,对基于色谱-质谱联用的脂质分析样品前处理技术存在的问题及发展趋势进行了探讨。样品前处理技术的发展将提高脂质分析的灵敏度、选择性和分析速度。     

离子迁移质谱技术及其在脂质分析中的应用

脂质在细胞和生物组织中发挥着重要作用,传统的脂质组学分析方法虽可以实现脂质鉴定,但脂质结构的多样性和相似性仍为脂质组学研究中全脂质分析提出了巨大的挑战。离子迁移谱是根据离子在缓冲气体或电力场中的迁移特性对其进行分离的技术,将离子迁移谱与传统脂质分析方法联用不仅有助于复杂脂质的分离,同时还可对脂质异构体进行分析鉴定,提高脂质分析的分辨率和选择性。该文主要对不同离子迁移质谱技术及其在脂质分析中的应用进行综述,并对其未来发展方向进行了展望。     

脂质组学及其分析方法

脂质组学的研究属于生命科学的范畴,与人类的健康密切相关。目前,脂质组学已成为代谢组学最重要的分支之一,且是一个非常活跃的研究领域,尤其在研究疾病方面的重要性已经引起了科学界的广泛关注。该文简要介绍了脂质组学的研究内容,重点评述了脂质组学分析方法,包括样品处理、轮廓分析、目标分析、成像分析以及数据处理。最后提出了脂质组学分析技术和方法的展望。     

Atmospheric Pressure Photoionization as a Powerful Tool for Large-Scale Lipidomic Studies

Lipidomic studies often use liquid chromatography/electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (LC/ESI-MS) for separation, identification, and quantification. However, due to the wide structural diversity of lipids, the most apolar part of the lipidome is often detected with low sensitivity in ESI. Atmospheric pressure (APPI) can be an alternative ionization source since normal-phase solvents are known to enhance photoionization of these classes. In this paper, we intend to show the efficiency of APPI to identify different lipid classes, with a special interest on sphingolipids. In-source APPI fragmentation appears to be an added value for the structural analysis of lipids. It provides a detailed characterization of both the polar head and the non polar moiety of most lipid classes, and it makes possible the detection of all lipids in both polarities, which is not always possible with ESI.     

Probing the Lipid Annular Belt by Gas‐Phase Dissociation of Membrane Proteins in Nanodiscs

Interactions between membrane proteins and lipids are often crucial for structure and function yet difficult to define because of their dynamic and heterogeneous nature. Here, we use mass spectrometry to demonstrate that membrane protein oligomers ejected from nanodiscs in the gas phase retain large numbers of lipid interactions. The complex mass spectra that result from gas‐phase dissociation were assigned using a Bayesian deconvolution algorithm together with mass defect analysis, allowing us to count individual lipid molecules bound to membrane proteins. Comparison of the lipid distributions measured by mass spectrometry with molecular dynamics simulations reveals that the distributions correspond to distinct lipid shells that vary according to the type of protein–lipid interactions. Our results demonstrate that nanodiscs offer the potential for native mass spectrometry to probe interactions between membrane proteins and the wider lipid environment.     

Phenylmethanesulfonyl fluoride pretreatment stabilizes plasma lipidome in lipidomic and metabolomic analysis

Though it is standard practice to test the stability of analytes in the matrix for routine bioanalytical method, stability evaluation is always impractical and skipped in untargeted lipidomic and metabolomic analysis because analytes in these studies are enormous, diverse and sometimes unknown. Lipidome represents a major class of plasma metabolome and shows great potential to be diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers. However, lipidome also faces stability problems because plasma contains kinds of lipid degradation enzyme. Here, using liquid chromatography time of flight mass spectrometry based lipidomic methodology, plasma levels of various lipids including triglyceride (TG), diglyceride (DG), free fatty acid (FFA), phosphatidylethanolamine (PE) phosphatidylcholine (PC), lyso-phosphatidylcholine (LPC), lyso-phosphatidylethanolamine (LPE), and sphingomyelin (SM) were dynamically determined within 4 h at ambient temperature. In mouse and rat plasma, the levels of most TG, DG, PC and PE species significantly decreased with respect to time, whereas those of LPC, LPE and FFA significantly increased with respect to time. However, such changes did not occur in human plasma, thus indicating hepatic lipase and esterase might involve in the species-specified degradation of lipid classes in plasma. Phenylmethanesulfonyl fluoride (PMSF) pretreatment prevented such lipidome instability in mouse plasma. The results suggested the instability of plasma lipidome should be highly concerned, and the enhancement of ex vivo stability of plasma lipidome could enable more reliable clinical translation of lipidomic data for biomarker discovery.     

Using ambient ozone for assignment of double bond position in unsaturated lipids

Unsaturated lipids deposited onto a range of materials are observed to react with the low concentrations of ozone present in normal laboratory air. Parent lipids and ozonolysis cleavage products are both detected directly from surfaces by desorption electrospray ionisation mass spectrometry (DESI-MS) with the resulting mass spectra providing clear evidence of the double bond position within these molecules. This serendipitous process has been coupled with thin-layer chromatography (TLC) to provide a simple but powerful approach for the detailed structural elucidation of lipids present in complex biological extracts. Lipid extracts from human lens were deposited onto normal phase TLC plates and then developed to separate components according to lipid class. Exposure of the developed plates to laboratory air for ca. 1 h prior to DESI-MS analysis gave rise to ozonolysis products allowing for the unambiguous identification of double bond positions in even low abundant, unsaturated lipids. In particular, the co-localization of intact unsaturated lactosylceramides (LacCer) with products from their oxidative cleavage provide the first evidence for the presence of three isomeric LacCer (d18:0/24:1) species in the ocular lens lipidome, i.e., variants with double bonds at the n-9, n-7 and n-5 positions.     

Versatile lipid profiling by liquid chromatography–high resolution mass spectrometry using all ion fragmentation and polarity switching. Preliminary application for serum samples phenotyping related to canine mammary cancer

Lipids represent an extended class of substances characterized by such high variety and complexity that makes their unified analyses by liquid chromatography coupled to either high resolution or tandem mass spectrometry (LC–HRMS or LC–MS/MS) a real challenge. In the present study, a new versatile methodology associating ultra high performance liquid chromatography coupled to high resolution tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC–HRMS/MS) have been developed for a comprehensive analysis of lipids. The use of polarity switching and “all ion fragmentation” (AIF) have been two action levels particularly exploited to finally permit the detection and identification of a multi-class and multi-analyte extended range of lipids in a single run. For identification purposes, both higher energy collision dissociation (HCD) and in-source CID (collision induced dissociation) fragmentation were evaluated in order to obtain information about the precursor and product ions in the same spectra. This approach provides both class-specific and lipid-specific fragments, enhancing lipid identification. Finally, the developed method was applied for differential phenotyping of serum samples collected from pet dogs developing spontaneous malignant mammary tumors and health controls. A biological signature associated with the presence of cancer was then successfully revealed from this lipidome analysis, which required to be further investigated and confirmed at larger scale.     

Lipid profiling of mammalian cells with in situ matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-mass spectrometry

The analysis of cellular lipids and phospholipids has been of continuously increasing research interest due to the importance of these molecules in psychological process. In this work, a mass spectrometry-based method for direct, in situ analysis of lipids in cells was reported. Mammalian cells were directly cultured on ITO-coated glass and then analyzed by matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-mass spectrometry (MALDI-MS). The matrix application process was achieved by electrospray coating, which produced a homogenous layer of matrix crystal on the sample. The detection results and reproducibility are satisfactory. With this method, a profile of abundant membrane lipids is generated, which is characteristic of cell type. In conclusion, this in situ MALDI-MS cellular lipid analysis method provides a platform for sensitive and robust molecular profiling of mammalian cells.     

Lipid mass spectrometry: A path traveled for 50 years

In the middle of the 1960s, I began graduate school and at the same time started on the path of using mass spectrometry to gain insight into various aspects of lipid biochemistry. This was not a straight path but one that went from organic geochemistry, to lunar sample analysis, to a pursuit of the structure of an elusive and very active, lipid mediator slow reacting substance of anaphylaxis (SRS‐A). The discovery of the structure of SRS‐A opened important questions about phospholipid biochemistry and the arachidonate cycle in cells. I have written this reflection to highlight the various advances in mass spectrometry that occurred during this time that had a great impact on our ability to study lipid biochemistry. I specifically applied these new advances to studies of leukotriene biosynthesis in vivo, leukotriene metabolism, and arachidonate‐containing phospholipids that are essential in providing arachidonic acid for the 5‐lipoxygenase pathway. Along the way, imaging mass spectrometry was shown to be a powerful tool to probe lipids as they exist in tissue slices. We found this as just one of the ways to use the emerging technology of lipidomics to study human pathophysiology. Our studies of neutral lipids and oxidized phospholipids were especially challenging due to the total number of molecular species that could be found in cells. Many challenges remain in using mass spectrometry for lipid studies, and a few are presented.     

A Mass‐Spectrometry‐Based Approach to Distinguish Annular and Specific Lipid Binding to Membrane Proteins

Membrane proteins engage in a variety of contacts with their surrounding lipids, but distinguishing between specifically bound lipids, and non‐specific, annular interactions is a challenging problem. Applying native mass spectrometry to three membrane protein complexes with different lipid‐binding properties, we explore the ability of detergents to compete with lipids bound in different environments. We show that lipids in annular positions on the presenilin homologue protease are subject to constant exchange with detergent. By contrast, detergent‐resistant lipids bound at the dimer interface in the leucine transporter show decreased k_off rates in molecular dynamics simulations. Turning to the lipid flippase MurJ, we find that addition of the natural substrate lipid‐II results in the formation of a 1:1 protein–lipid complex, where the lipid cannot be displaced by detergent from the highly protected active site. In summary, we distinguish annular from non‐annular lipids based on their exchange rates in solution.     

A reversed-phase capillary ultra-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS) method for comprehensive top-down/bottom-up lipid profiling

Lipidomics is a critical part of metabolomics and aims to study all the lipids within a living system. We present here the development and evaluation of a sensitive capillary UPLC-MS method for comprehensive top-down/bottom-up lipid profiling. Three different stationary phases were evaluated in terms of peak capacity, linearity, reproducibility, and limit of quantification (LOQ) using a mixture of lipid standards representative of the lipidome. The relative standard deviations of the retention times and peak abundances of the lipid standards were 0.29% and 7.7%, respectively, when using the optimized method. The linearity was acceptable at >0.99 over 3 orders of magnitude, and the LOQs were sub-fmol. To demonstrate the performance of the method in the analysis of complex samples, we analyzed lipids extracted from a human cell line, rat plasma, and a model human skin tissue, identifying 446, 444, and 370 unique lipids, respectively. Overall, the method provided either higher coverage of the lipidome, greater measurement sensitivity, or both, when compared to other approaches of global, untargeted lipid profiling based on chromatography coupled with MS.