Relative quantitation of phosphatidylcholines with interfered masses of protonated and sodiated molecules by tandem and Fourier-transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry

The present work deals with deconvolution of interfered peaks of protonated and sodiated phosphatidylcholines to solve the problem of relative quantitation of these compounds. The method was developed based on the fact that adducts of phosphatidylcholines with proton and sodium ion give unique characteristic peaks in tandem mass spectrometry. Ultra-high-resolution Fourier-transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry was used to resolve interfered peaks and thus validate the results of tandem mass spectrometry-based deconvolution. Applicability of the method was tested with synthesized phosphatidylcholines and applied for tissue-spray analysis of the clinical samples and demonstrated good correlation (0.996) between MS/MS and Fourier-transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry results.