Chapter Seven - The Lipid World Concept of Plant Lipidomics

Abstract Lipidomics has emerged as a new field that allows using various approaches to the chemical structures and the quantitative composition of more than a hundred lipid molecular species constituting the cellular lipidome. The increase of the performance of lipidomic analysis has resulted in recent developments in electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI/MS) and rapid scanning tandem spectrometers that are capable of detecting and quantifying lipids at high sensitivity in an online high-performance chromatography. In this review, after a short description of the characteristic lipid classes of the plant kingdom, different approaches of ‘lipidomics’ will be addressed, including sample preparation (extractions, sample storage), MS analysis (ionization sources, shotgun lipidomics by direct infusion using tandem-in-space instruments and high-resolution systems and the use of separative methods before MS studies). Common fragmentation modes (MRM, CID including HCD) to determine molecular structures of lipid families in plants are also developed. The different principles of MS lipid analyses are briefly described and the different strategies using HPLC and MS/MS to quantify the different plant lipid molecular species are presented.