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Updated: Jan 31, 2026

Mass Spectrometric Analysis of Glycosphingolipid Antigens
Published on: April 16, 2013
Online photochemical derivatization enables comprehensive mass spectrometric analysis of unsaturated phospholipid
Wenpeng Zhang1,2, Donghui Zhang1, Qinhua Chen3
1MOE Key Laboratory of Bioorganic Phosphorus Chemistry & Chemical Biology, Department of Chemistry and State Key Laboratory of Precision Measurement Technology and Instruments, Department of Precision Instrument, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China.
Abstract:
Mass spectrometry-based lipidomics is the primary tool for the structural analysis of lipids but the effective localization of carbon-carbon double bonds (C=C) in unsaturated lipids to distinguish C=C location isomers remains challenging. Here, we develop a large-scale lipid analysis platform by coupling online C=C derivatization through the Paternò-Büchi reaction with liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. This provides rich information on lipid C=C location isomers, revealing C=C locations for more than 200 unsaturated glycerophospholipids in bovine liver among which we identify 55 groups of C=C location isomers. By analyzing tissue samples of patients with breast cancer and type 2 diabetes plasma samples, we find that the ratios of C=C isomers are much less affected by interpersonal variations than their individual abundances, suggesting that isomer ratios may be used for the discovery of lipid biomarkers.
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