Lipid Discovery by Combinatorial Screening and Untargeted LC-MS/MS

www.nature.com/scientificreports OPEN received: 07 April 2016 accepted: 26 May 2016 Published: 17 June 2016 Lipid Discovery by Combinatorial Screening and Untargeted LC-MS/MS Mesut Bilgin1,†, Petra Born1, Filomena Fezza2,3, Michael Heimes4, Nicolina Mastrangelo5, Nicolai Wagner1, Carsten Schultz4, Mauro Maccarrone3,5, Suzanne Eaton1, André Nadler1,4, Matthias Wilm6 & Andrej Shevchenko1 We present a method for the systematic identification of picogram quantities of new lipids in total extracts of tissues and fluids. It relies on the modularity of lipid structures and applies all-ions fragmentation LC-MS/MS and Arcadiate software to recognize individual modules originating from the same lipid precursor of known or assumed structure. In this way it alleviates the need to recognize and fragment very low abundant precursors of novel molecules in complex lipid extracts. In a single analysis of rat kidney extract the method identified 58 known and discovered 74 novel endogenous endocannabinoids and endocannabinoid-related molecules, including a novel class of N-acylaspartates that inhibit Hedgehog signaling while having no impact on endocannabinoid receptors. Cells produce a palette of lipid bioregulators, e.g. steroid hormones, eicosanoids or endocannabinoids, to mention only a few. Known molecules may be identified by probing MS/MS spectra against a reference spectra database1 or by their direct interpretation relying upon common fragmentation mechanisms and lipid-class specific compositional constraints2. In principle, these approaches could be extended to the identification of putative lipid structures by relaxing spectra matching requirements3,4. However, in crude extracts the abundance of new molecules is often too low compared to other lipids. Therefore their precursor ions are not selected for fragmentation in data-dependent LC-MS/MS experiments and in shotgun experiments they render non-interpretable MS/MS spectra dominated by product ions of co-fragmented lipids and chemical noise. This constitutes a major bottleneck in a systematic discovery of novel lipids. Despite their compositional diversity, lipids are composed from a large, yet finite compendium of common structural modules such as fatty acids, amino acids, glycerol, ethanolamine, carbohydrates, etc., which associate in numerous combinations5. Consistent with the modular organization, MS/MS fragmentation of lipid precursors produces signature ions specific for each structural module and their grouping defines the lipid classes and individual species2,6. To recognize and group the signature ions it might not be necessary to mass-select each precursor individually. Instead, all precursors co-eluted during LC-MS/MS experiment may be fragmented at once and all fragments simultaneously detected in a highly convoluted spectrum – this approach was termed as MSE and also as all-ions fragmentation LC-MS/MS (AIF LC-MS/MS)7–10. Fragment ions could be associated with corresponding precursors by retroactive in silico alignment of their peaks in extracted ion chromatograms (XIC). We implemented AIF LC-MS/MS in an unbiased screening approach and showed that it could systematically identify novel lipid molecules and lipid classes at the low picogram level. 1 Max Planck Institute for Cell Biology and Genetics, Pfotenhauerstraβe 108, 01307 Dresden, Germany. 2Department of Experimental Medicine and Surgery, Tor Vergata University of Rome, via Montpellier 1, 00133, Rome, Italy. 3 European Center for Brain Research/Fondazione Santa Lucia, via del Fosso di Fiorano 65, 00143 Rome, Italy. 4 European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), Meyerhofstrasse 1, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany. 5Department of Medicine, Campus Bio-Medico University of Rome, Via Alvaro del Portillo 21, 00128 Rome. 6Conway Institute of Biomolecular and Biomedical Research, University College Dublin, 4 Dublin, Ireland. †Present address: Unit for Cell Death and Metabolism, Center for Autophagy, Recycling and Disease, Danish Cancer Society Research Center, DK-2100, Copenhagen, Denmark. Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to A.S. (email: ) Scientific Reports | 6:27920 | DOI: 10.1038/srep27920 1 www.nature.com/scientificreports/ Figure 1. Design and validation of the lipid discovery workflow. (A) AIF LC-MS/MS screen for molecules consisting of a polar head group H and fatty acid moiety F. A putative compound fjhi is identified if XIC peaks of its precursor ion [fjhi]+ (in blue) and fragment [hi]+ spectra (in red) align (two-colour arrow). (B) Molecular ion and the head group fragment of N-acylethanolamines (NAE). (C) Venn diagram of endogenous NAE independently identified by all-ions fragmentation (AIF) and parallel reaction monitoring (PRM) on a Q Exactive and by multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) on a triple quadrupole mass spectrometer. Results We reasoned that novel lipid structures may arise from yet unknown combinations of already known modules and both known and novel combinations may be recognized in the same AIF LC-MS/MS analysis (Fig. 1). For presentation clarity, let us assume that anticipated lipid molecules may consist of two structural modules: a polar head group (H) and a fatty acid (F). To screen for new molecules, we will first design plausible structures by combining all fatty acid moieties fj with all head groups hi from the H and F lists, respectively. For each compound fjhi we compute m/z of its precursor ion [fjhi]+ and characteristic polar head group fragment [hi]+ which would be most likely detectable in tandem mass spectra. AIF LC-MS/MS of a total extract detects all ionisable precursors (in MS spectra) and all fragments (in AIF MS/MS spectra). Chromatographic peaks of anticipated precursors (XIC [fjhi]+) and fragments (XIC [hi]+) are then aligned by the in-house developed Arcadiate software. They should neatly overlap if [hi]+ is produced from [fjhi]+ (see aligned XIC trace in Fig. 1A), while no or partial match indicates that this pair of ions is unrelated. The same scheme also applies for more complex fragmentation patterns since peaks alignment specificity increases if XICs of several fragments are required to match. A dataset produced by a single AIF LC-MS/MS experiment suffices for in silico screening for an unrestricted number of combinations of modules. If the structure of candidate molecules remains ambiguous, AIF LC-MS/MS should be followed by the targeted acquisition of full high resolution MS/MS spectra of their precursors, chemical derivatization11 and, ultimately, by chemical synthesis. We applied AIF LC-MS/MS to profile endogenous endocannabinoid-related compounds (ERC) in a total extract of rat kidney (Fig. 1A). ERC consist of two structural modules: a fatty acid or fatty alcohol linked to a polar head group (which determines its class), such as ethanolamine, glycerol, dopamine or amino acids (such as Ser or Gly). Bona fide endocannabinoids are physiological ligands of type 1 and type 2 cannab (...truncated)