Photochemical Tagging for Quantitation of Unsaturated Fatty Acids by Mass Spectrometry

Fatty acid (FA) profiling provides phenotypic information and is increasingly used in a broad,range of biological and, biomedical studies. Quantitation of unsaturated FAs with confident carbon-carbon, double bond (C=C) location assignment is both: sample and time consuming using-traditional gas chromatography mass spectrometry analysis. In this study, we-developed a rapid, sensitive, and quantitative method for profiling unsaturated FAs without using chromatographic-separations. This method was based on a combination of in-Solution photochemical tagging of a C=C;in FAs and a subsequent gas-phase detagging via tandem (neutral loss scan) mass spectrometry. It enabled quantitation of unsaturated FAs from, various biological samples (blood, plasma, and cell lines). More importantly, quantitative information on FA C=C location isomers, which was traditionally overlooked, could now be obtained and applied to studying FA changes between normal and cancerous human prostate cells.