Investigation of oyster Crassostrea gigas lipid profile from three sea areas of China based on non-targeted lipidomics for their geographic region traceability.

The present study sought to analyze the lipid profiles of oyster Crassostrea gigas from Yellow Sea (YS), East China Sea, and South China Sea (SCS) through the untargeted lipidomics strategy based on UPLC-Q-Exactive Orbitrap mass spectrometry and multivariate statistics. The results elucidated that geographical differences had profound effects on the lipid content, composition, and lipid molecular profiles. Notably, oysters from the YS group contained the highest lipid content, including triacylglycerol, diacylglycerols, and the majority of phospholipid molecule species, while oysters from the ECS group contained most of the phosphatidylcholine species and the SCS group contained most of the sphingolipid species. Totally, 1155 lipid molecular species belonging to 21 subclasses were identified; of them, 45 lipid molecular species could serve as differential marker for lipid of oysters from different sea areas. Overall, lipidomics could be a potential approach for discrimination of lipid characters between marine shellfishes for geographical origin traceability.