Lipidomic profiling and discovery of lipid biomarkers in Stephanodiscus sp under cold stress

Changes in membrane lipid composition play multiple roles in plant adaptation and survival in the face of chilling and freezing damage. The ultra-performance liquid chromatography/quadrupole-TOF-MS (UPLC/Q-TOF-MS)-based approach was developed for investigating the lipid changes during cold exposure in Stephanodiscus sp. followed by multivariate statistical analysis including principal components analysis, partial least squares discriminant analysis and orthogonal projection on latent structure discriminant analysis for data classification and potential biomarkers selection. The analysis demonstrated dramatic lipid alterations take place in both extraplastidic and plastidic membranes. Thirty-eight lipid molecules were selected and identified as putative biomarkers, including chlorophyll a degradation products, triacylglycerol, phosphatidylcholine, phosphatidylglycerol, sulfo-quinovosyldiacylglycerol, monogalactosyldiacylglyceroll, lyso-phosphatidylglycerol, lyso-phosphatidylcholine, lyso-monogalactosyldiacylglycerol and lyso-sulfoquinovosyldiacylglycerol. These metabolites have been shown previously to function in energy storage, membrane stability and photosynthesis efficiency. This study is the first one using UPLC/Q-TOF-MS-based lipidomic profiling with multivariate statistical analysis to explore the lipidomic changes of microalgae in response to stress conditions, which promotes better understanding of their physiology and ecology.