posted on 2021-02-03, 20:09authored byLaura
S. Bailey, Fanran Huang, Tianqi Gao, Jinying Zhao, Kari B. Basso, Zhongwu Guo
Glycosphingolipids
(GSLs) play a key role in various biological
and pathological events. Thus, determination of the complete GSL compositions
in human tissues is essential for comparative and functional studies
of GSLs. In this work, a new strategy was developed for GSL characterization
and glycolipidomics analysis based on two-stage matching of experimental
and reference MS/MS spectra. In the first stage, carbohydrate fragments,
which contain only glycans and thus are conserved within a GSL species,
are directly matched to yield a species identification. In the second
stage, glycolipid fragments from the matched GSL species, which contain
both the lipid and glycans and thus shift due to lipid structural
changes, are treated according to lipid rule-based matching to characterize
the lipid compositions. This new strategy uses the whole spectrum
for GSL characterization. Furthermore, simple databases containing
only a single lipid form per GSL species can be utilized to identify
multiple GSL lipid forms. It is expected that this method will help
accelerate glycolipidomics analysis and disclose new and diverse lipid
forms of GSLs.