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Updated: Aug 6, 2026
Lipid Droplet Isolation for Quantitative Mass Spectrometry Analysis
Published on: April 17, 2017
Utilizing the total phosphorus content of lipid extracts as a normalization strategy in quantitative lipidomics
Johannes Scholz1, Anna Gremme2, Julia Hillebrand1
1University of Münster, Institute of Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry, Corrensstraße 48, 48149 Münster, Germany.
Background:
Normalization is a crucial element of quantitative lipidomics studies, for which there is still no uniform recommended strategy. There are various approaches for normalizing samples, including referencing to the total volume or weight, to the DNA content or the protein content. In addition, samples can be normalized to the phosphorus content, but either not all phospholipid classes are included or a less sensitive colorimetric assay is used. It is therefore necessary to develop new ways of normalization that are both specific and sensitive to compensate for the biological sample variance and the variance from pre-analytical and analytical steps.
Results:
We present a tailored normalization method for lipid quantification which is based on the total phosphorus content (TPC) of lipid extracts. The TPC reflects the amount of phospholipids present in the sample, because polar phosphorus-containing compounds like DNA and phosphorylated sugars are separated due to the extraction procedure. In order to test the normalization strategy, the (phospho)-lipids in the model organism C. elegans were quantified using SFC-TIMS-MS/MS. Subsequently, a digestion method was developed to degrade the lipids present in the organic extract. This was used to determine the TPC via ICP-OES and ICP-MS/MS analysis. In particular, very low detection limits (LOQ = 0.3 μg L-1) can be achieved with the ICP-MS/MS method. The elemental and molecular information were then combined, and the samples were normalized to TPC. The normalization showed a significant improvement in the standard deviations compared to the initial concentrations as well as an improvement compared to the normalization based on the total protein content, which is very frequently used.
Significance:
Our method shows a sensitive way to determine the TPC in total lipid extracts of various samples, exemplified for human plasma and nematode samples. The normalization minimizes the standard deviations in biological samples even in comparison with other normalization approaches, i.e. protein content, and can contribute to increasing the conclusiveness of quantitative lipidomics studies.
