Selective or class-wide mass fingerprinting of phosphatidylcholines and cerebrosides from lipid mixtures by MALDI mass spectrometry

Matrix assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) mass spectrometry (MS) is a very effective method for lipid mass fingerprinting. However, MALDI MS suffered from spectral complexities, differential ionization efficiencies, and poor reproducibility when analyzing complex lipid mixtures without prior separation steps. Here, we aimed to find optimal MALDI sample preparation methods which enable selective or class-wide mass fingerprinting of two totally different lipid classes. In order to achieve this, various matrices with additives were tested against the mixture of phosphatidylcholine (PC) and cerebrosides (Cers) which are abundant in animal brain tissues and also of great interests in disease biology. Our results showed that, from complex lipid mixtures, 2,4,6-trihydroxyacetophenone (THAP) with NaNO3 was a useful MALDI matrix for the class-wide fingerprinting of PC and Cers. In contrast, THAP efficiently generated PC-focused profiles and graphene oxide (GO) with NaNO ₃ provided Cer-only profiles with reduced spectral complexity.