Lipid profiling of complex biological mixtures by liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry using a novel scanning quadrupole data-independent acquisition strategy.

Rationale: A novel data-independent acquisition method is detailed that incorporates a scanning quadrupole in front of an orthogonal acceleration time-of-flight (TOF) mass analyser. This approach is described and the attributes are compared and contrasted to other DIA approaches.

Methods: Specific application of the method to both targeted and untargeted lipidomic identification strategies is discussed, with data from both shotgun and LC separated lipidomics experiments presented.

Results: The benefits of the fast quadrupole scanning technique are highlighted, and include improvements in speed and specificity for complex mixtures providing high quality qualitative and quantitative data.

Conclusions: In particular the high specificity afforded by the scanning quadrupole improves qualitative information for lipid identification.