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Journal article

Total fatty acid analysis of human blood samples in one minute by high-resolution mass spectrometry

Abstract:
Total fatty acid analysis is a routine method in many areas, including lipotyping of individuals in personalized medicine, analysis of foodstuffs, and optimization of oil production in biotechnology. This analysis is commonly done by converting fatty acyl (FA) chains of intact lipids into FA methyl esters (FAMEs) and monitoring these by gas-chromatography (GC)-based methods, typically requiring at least 15 min of analysis per sample. Here, we describe a novel method that supports fast, precise and accurate absolute quantification of total FA levels in human plasma and serum samples. The method uses acid-catalyzed transesterification with 18O-enriched H2O (i.e., H218O) to convert FA chains into 18O-labeled free fatty acids. The resulting “mass-tagged” FA analytes can be specifically monitored with improved signal-to-background by 1 min of high resolution Fourier transform mass spectrometry (FTMS) on an Orbitrap-based mass spectrometer. By benchmarking to National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) certified standard reference materials we show that the performance of our method is comparable, and at times superior, to that of gold-standard GC-based methods. In addition, we demonstrate that the method supports the accurate quantification of FA differences in samples obtained in dietary intervention studies and also affords specific monitoring of ingested stable isotope-labeled fatty acids (13C16-palmitate) in normoinsulinemic and hyperinsulinemic human subjects. Overall, our novel high-throughput method is generic and suitable for many application areas, spanning basic research to personalized medicine, and is particularly useful for laboratories equipped with high resolution mass spectrometers, but lacking access to GC-based instrumentation.
Publication status:
Published
Peer review status:
Peer reviewed

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Publisher copy:
10.3390/biom9010007

Authors


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Role:
Author
ORCID:
0000-0003-4886-0811
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Institution:
University of Oxford
Division:
MSD
Department:
RDM
Sub department:
OCDEM
Role:
Author
ORCID:
0000-0002-2648-6526
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Role:
Author
ORCID:
0000-0003-4963-0276


Publisher:
MDPI
Journal:
Biomolecules More from this journal
Volume:
9
Issue:
1
Article number:
7
Publication date:
2018-12-27
Acceptance date:
2018-12-17
DOI:
EISSN:
2218-273X
ISSN:
2218-273X
Pmid:
30591667


Language:
English
Keywords:
Pubs id:
pubs:959249
UUID:
uuid:0950d9ef-356f-4061-9182-5e0723eef7a7
Local pid:
pubs:959249
Source identifiers:
959249
Deposit date:
2019-02-12

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