Radical-directed dissociation mass spectrometry for differentiation and relative quantitation of isomeric ether-linked phosphatidylcholines

Background

Ether-linked phosphatidylcholines (PCs) include both plasmanyl and plasmenyl PCs, which contain an ether or a vinyl ether bond at the sn-1 linkage position, respectively. Profiling and quantifying ether PCs with accurate structural information is challenging because of the common presence of isomeric and isobaric species in a lipidome.

Results

In the present study, radical directed dissociation (RDD) from collision-induced dissociation (CID) of the bicarbonate anion adduct of ether PCs has been investigated to differentiate and relatively quantify ether PCs. Alkyl- and alkenyl- PCs give diagnostic characteristic fragment patterns that enable their confident identification and isomer differentiation. Additionally, the sn-position specific product ions have proven effective for relative quantitation among isomers in ether PCs and their isobaric PC species. Using this methodology, we successfully identified a total of 30 PC-O species, 21 PC-P species at the chain composition level, and 22 species of isobaric PC at the sn-position level in the human plasma lipid extract. The quantitative analysis revealed that ether PCs with a 20:4 fatty acyl chain are relatively more abundant in human plasma. Finally, the profile of ether PCs in type 2 diabetic (T2D) groups compared to normal control groups revealed a significant decrease in PC-O 18:1/20:5. We also found it is the PC species containing a 17-carbon fatty acyl chain, rather than their isobaric ether PCs, that shows a decreasing trend in the T2D groups.

Significance

ether-linked PCs are firstly investigated by RDD mass spectrometry.