Lipidomics of Intact Mitochondria by MALDI-TOF/MS

Abstract
Mitochondria isolated from bovine heart and yeast have been employed to set up and validate the new method of lipid analysis. The mitochondrial suspension is directly applied over the target and, after drying, covered by a thin layer of the 9-aminoacridine matrix solution. The lipid profiles acquired with this procedure contain all peaks previously obtained by analyzing the lipid extracts of isolated mitochondria by TLC and/or mass spectrometry. The novel procedure allows the quick, simple, precise and accurate analysis of membrane lipids, utilizing only a tiny amount of isolated organelle; it has also been tested with intact membranes of the bacterium Paracoccus denitrificans, for its evolutionary link to present-day mitochondria. The method is of general validity for the lipid analysis of other cell fractions and isolated organelles.

The article is published online in the Journal of Lipid Research and is free to access.