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Structural determination of sphingomyelin by tandem mass spectrometry with electrospray ionization

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Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry

Abstract

Alkaline metal adduct ions of sphingomyelin were formed by electrospray ionization in positive ion mode. Under low energy collisionally activated dissociation (CAD), the product ion spectra yield abundant fragment ions representative of both long chain base and fatty acid which permit unequivocal determination of the structure. Tandem spectra obtained by constant neutral loss scanning permit identification of sphingomyelin class and specific long chain base subclass in the mixture. The fragmentation pathways under CAD were proposed, and were further confirmed by source CAD tandem mass spectrometry. The total analysis of sphingomyelin mixtures from bovine brain, bovine erythrocytes, and chicken egg yolk is also presented.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mass Spectrometry Resource, Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism, Department of Medicine, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri, USA

    Fong-Fu Hsu & John Turk

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  1. Fong-Fu Hsu
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  2. John Turk
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Correspondence to Fong-Fu Hsu.

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Hsu, FF., Turk, J. Structural determination of sphingomyelin by tandem mass spectrometry with electrospray ionization. J Am Soc Mass Spectrom 11, 437–449 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1016/S1044-0305(99)00150-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S1044-0305(99)00150-6

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