LC-ESI-HRMS - lipidomics of phospholipids – Characterization of extraction, chromatography and detection parameters

Lipids are a diverse class of molecules involved in many biological functions including cell signaling or cell membrane assembly. Owing to this relevance, LC-MS/MS based lipidomics emerged as a major field in modern analytical chemistry. Here, we thoroughly characterized the influence of MS and LC settings – of a Q Exactive HF operated in Full MS/data-dependent MS2 TOP N acquisition mode - in order to optimize the semi-quantification of polar lipids. Optimization of MS-source settings improved the signal intensity by factor 3 compared to default settings. Polar lipids were separated on an ACQUITY Premier CSH C18 reversed-phase column (100 x 2.1 mm, 1.7 µm, 130 Å) during an elution window of 28 min, leading to a sufficient number of both data points across the chromatographic peaks, as well as MS2 spectra. Analysis was carried out in positive and negative ionization mode enabling the detection of a broader spectrum of lipids and to support the structural characterization of lipids. Optimal sample preparation of biological samples was achieved by liquid-liquid extraction using MeOH/MTBE resulting in an excellent extraction recovery >85% with an intra-day and inter-day variability <15%. The optimized method was applied on the investigation of changes in the phospholipid pattern in plasma from human subjects supplemented with n3-PUFA (20:5 and 22:6). The strongest increase was observed for lipids bearing 20:5, while 22:4 bearing lipids were lowered. Specifically, LPC 20:5_0:0 and PC 16:0_20:5 were found to be strongest elevated, while PE 18:0_22:4 and PC 18:2_18:2 were decreased by n3-PUFA supplementation. These results were confirmed by targeted LC-MS/MS using commercially available phospholipids as standards.