Improving lipid identification and quantification: chromatogram deconvolution for LC-MS/MS workflows

Lipidomics relies on mass spectrometry-based workflows to identify and quantify complex lipid species. Due to the modular architecture of lipids, including headgroups, backbones, and fatty acyl chains, distinct precursor ions often produce isobaric or identical fragment ions. This problem is amplified in data-independent acquisition (DIA), where wide isolation windows (e.g. 25 Da) allow co-eluting precursors with different m/z values to generate highly chimeric MS/MS spectra. Consequently, fragments originating from multiple precursors, including isobars, isomers, and lipid-class-specific ions, are merged into a single MS/MS spectrum. Current lipid identification strategies often process such chimeric spectra in an uncontrolled manner, assigning them to one or more candidate lipids, thereby increasing false-positive identifications.

Here, we introduce an algorithm that deconvolutes chimeric MS/MS spectra and chromatograms by exploiting their temporal correlation with associated precursor chromatographic profiles, independent of elution peak shape. Using simulated and real experimental lipidomics data, we demonstrate that this approach substantially improves lipid fragment assignment, reduces false-positive identifications, and enables more reliable fragment-level quantification, leading to more robust downstream statistical analyses and biological interpretations.

Source code of the software library: GitLab (Apache 2.0 License): https://gitlab.com/computational-multiomics/projects/mixture-model-deconvolution; Data: Zenodo (Apache 2.0 License): https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21218594.