New developments in multidimensional mass spectrometry based shotgun lipidomics

Shotgun lipidomics, as one of the approaches employed for lipidomics analysis based on ESI/MS, is getting more and more developed. At the current stage of development for shotgun lipidomics, the analyses of over 20 lipid classes, hundreds to over a thousand lipid molecular species, and >95% of the mass content of a cellular lipidome can be readily achieved. Even at this stage, shotgun lipidomics has already showed its powerful and broad applications in biological, pathological, and pathophysiological studies.^38,52-57 It can be anticipated that identification of many biochemical mechanisms underlying lipid metabolism critical to disease states will be increasingly uncovered as the further development of shotgun lipidomics and its penetration into lower and lower abundance regions of mass contents of individual lipid molecular species.