Bacterial phospholipid molecular species analysis by ion-pair reversed-phase HPLC/ESI/MS.

This work set out to optimize the detection and separation of several phospholipid molecular species on a reversed-phase column with the use of an electrospray ionization/mass spectrometry-compatible counter-ion. An application of this technique concerned a qualitative and quantitative analysis of bacterial membrane phospholipids extracted from Corynebacterium species strain 8. The phospholipid classes of strain 8 were identified as phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylinositol, diphosphatidylglycerol, and a peculiar lipid compound, acyl phosphatidylglycerol. Most of the molecular species structures were elucidated, and regarding phosphatidylglycerol, the fatty acid positions were clearly determined with the calculation of the sn-2/sn-1 intensity ratio of the fatty acyl chain fragments.