Scoparone affects lipid metabolism in primary hepatocytes using lipidomics

Lipidomics, which focuses on the global study of molecular lipids in biological systems, could provide valuable insights about disease mechanisms. In this study, we present a nontargeted lipidomics strategy to determine cellular lipid alterations after scoparone exposure in primary hepatocytes. Lipid metabolic profiles were analyzed by high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with time-of-flight mass spectrometry, and a novel imaging TransOmics tool has been developed for the analysis of high-resolution MS data, including the data pretreatment, visualization, automated identification, deconvolution and quantification of lipid species. Chemometric and statistical analyses of the obtained lipid fingerprints revealed the global lipidomic alterations and tested the therapeutic effects of scoparone. Identification of ten proposed lipids contributed to the better understanding of the effects of scoparone on lipid metabolism in hepatocytes. The most striking finding was that scoparone caused comprehensive lipid changes, as represented by significant changes of the identificated lipids. The levels of identified PG(19:1(9Z)/14:0), PE(17:1(9Z)/0:0), PE(19:1(9Z)/0:0) were found to be upregulated in ethanol-induced group, whereas the levels in scoparone group were downregulated. Lipid metabolism in primary hepatocytes was changed significantly by scoparone treatment. We believe that this novel approach could substantially broaden the applications of high mass resolution mass spectrometry for cellular lipidomics.