Open AccessCharacterization of Glycosphingolipids and Their Diverse Lipid Forms through Two-Stage Matching of LC-MS/MS Spectra
Author(s) -
Lisa M. Bailey,
Fanran Huang,
Tianqi Gao,
Jinying Zhao,
Kari B. Basso,
Zhongwu Guo
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
analytical chemistry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.117
H-Index - 332
eISSN - 1520-6882
pISSN - 0003-2700
DOI - 10.1021/acs.analchem.0c04542
Subject(s) - chemistry , glycolipid , glycan , glycosphingolipid , sphingolipid , characterization (materials science) , biochemistry , lipidomics , computational biology , glycoprotein , biology , nanotechnology , materials science
Glycosphingolipids (GSLs) play a key role in various biological and pathological events. Thus, determination of the complete GSL compositions in human tissues is essential for comparative and functional studies of GSLs. In this work, a new strategy was developed for GSL characterization and glycolipidomics analysis based on two-stage matching of experimental and reference MS/MS spectra. In the first stage, carbohydrate fragments, which contain only glycans and thus are conserved within a GSL species, are directly matched to yield a species identification. In the second stage, glycolipid fragments from the matched GSL species, which contain both the lipid and glycans and thus shift due to lipid structural changes, are treated according to lipid rule-based matching to characterize the lipid compositions. This new strategy uses the whole spectrum for GSL characterization. Furthermore, simple databases containing only a single lipid form per GSL species can be utilized to identify multiple GSL lipid forms. It is expected that this method will help accelerate glycolipidomics analysis and disclose new and diverse lipid forms of GSLs.