Structural analysis of underivatized and derivatized aminophospholipids and phosphatidic acid by positive ion liquid secondary ion and collisionally induced dissociation tandem mass spectrometry.

This paper describes an approach for structurally analyzing aminophospholipids, including glycerophosphatidylethanolamine, glycerophosphatidylserine and their lyso analogues, and glycerophosphatidic acid by positive-ion liquid secondary-ion and four-sector tandem mass spectrometry. Polar head groups and the composition and position of the fatty acid chains in aminophospholipid species as well as diacyl and monoacyl phosphatidylethanolamine and their plasmalogen species can be characterized by collisionally induced dissociation of [M+H]+ ions of underivatized molecular species. Tandem mass spectrometry of [M+Na]+ and [M + 2Na-H]+ ions of 9-fluorenylmethyloxycarbonyl-derivatized glycerophosphatidylethanolamine and glycerophosphatidylserine induces fragmentation processes, but product ions are generally less structurally informative. Collisionally induced dissociation of [M + 2Na-H]+ ions of the molecular species of glycerophosphatidic acid not only yields information on the composition and position of fatty acid chains, but also allows the double bond location to be identified. This common positive-ion method is particularly effective in characterizing the molecular species of natural ethanolamine glycerophospholipids because of the advantage of a low detection limit. This approach also represents a useful alternative for the analysis of the molecular species from natural aminophospholipids by tandem mass spectrometry.