title: Ion mobility mass spectrometry enhances low-abundance species detection in untargeted lipidomics.
abstract: We describe a simple method for the detection of low intensity lipid signals in complex tissue samples, based on a combination of liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry and ion mobility mass spectrometry. The method relies on visual and software-assisted analysis of overlapped mobilograms (diagrams of mass-to-charge ratio,m/z,vsdrift time, DT) and was successfully applied in untargeted lipidomics analyses of mouse brain tissue to detect relatively small variations in a scarce class of phospholipids (N-acyl phosphatidylethanolamines) generated during neural tissue damage, against a background of hundreds of lipid species. Standard analytical tools, including Principal Component Analysis, failed to detect such changes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Drug Discovery and Development, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, via Morego 30, 16163 Genoa, Italy.
authors.forename: Abdul
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Basit
authors.affiliation: Department of Drug Discovery and Development, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, via Morego 30, 16163 Genoa, Italy.
authors.forename: Silvia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Pontis
authors.affiliation: Department of Drug Discovery and Development, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, via Morego 30, 16163 Genoa, Italy ; Departments of Anatomy and Neurobiology, Pharmacology and Biological Chemistry, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697 USA.
authors.forename: Daniele
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Piomelli
authors.affiliation: Department of Drug Discovery and Development, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, via Morego 30, 16163 Genoa, Italy.
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Armirotti
keywords: Ion-mobility mass spectrometry; N-acyl phosphatidylethanolamines; Neuroinflammation; Untargeted lipidomics