Molecular fingerprinting of triglycerides in biological samples by electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry

1. A method for the determination of triglyceride individual molecular species composition of matter in a biological sample comprising:

subjecting the biological sample to lipid extraction to obtain a lipid extract;

subjecting the lipid extract to two dimensional electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (ESI/MS/MS) to generate a two dimensional plot representing molecular ions of the lipid extract on an x-axis and neutral loss scans of fatty acids of the lipid extract on a y-axis; and

comparing peak heights for the molecular ions with that for an internal standard to identify and/or quantify the triglyceride molecular species.

2. A method in accordance with claim 1 wherein the lipid extraction is a chloroform lipid extraction.

3. A method in accordance with claim 1 wherein said biological sample includes at least one blood, serum, a tissue biopsy, feces, and urine.

4. A method in accordance with claim 1 wherein said biological sample is one of a mammalian tissue and a plant tissue.

5. A method in accordance with claim 4 wherein the mammalian tissue is human tissue.

6. A method in accordance with claim 1 further comprisin determining a fingerprint profile of a triglyceride molecular species.

7. A method in accordance with claim 6 wherein said fingerprint profile represents the individual molecular species of a triglyceride composition of matter.

8. A method for the determination of triglyceride individual molecular species composition of matter directly from a lipid extract of a biological sample comprising:

subjecting said lipid extract to electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (ESI/MS/MS) to generate a two dimensional plot of molecular ions of the lipid extract versus neutral loss scans of fatty acids of the lipid extract; and

comparing peak heights for the molecular ions with that for an internal standard to identify and/or quantify the triglyceride molecular species.

9. A method in accordance with claim 8 wherein said lipid extract is obtained via a chloroform extraction.

10. A method in accordance with claim 8 wherein said biological sample is one of a mammalian or a plant tissue.

11. A method in accordance with claim 10 wherein said mammalian tissue is human tissue.

12. A method in accordance with claim 8 wherein the biological sample is an aqueous human fluid sample subjected to at least one of centrifugation and conventional column chromatography suitable for separation of lipoproteins to resolve triglyceride into different lipoproteins.

13. A method in accordance with claim 12 wherein the aqueous human fluid sample is selected from the group consisting of whole blood, blood serum, blood plasma, liver and urine.

14. A method in accordance with claim 13 wherein the lipid extract is obtained by extraction of said biological sample with chloroform.

15. A method in accordance with claim 8 wherein said internal standard includes a control sample of triglyceride molecular species.

16. A method in accordance with claim 8 further comprising iteratively deconvoluting and optionally normalizing the peak heights for the molecular ions.

17. A method in accordance with claim 8 further comprising deconvoluting two dimensional intercept contours of the neutral loss scans.