Stable Isotope Labeled Standards

With the availability of stable isotope standards and the incorporation of soft ionization techniques in mass spectrometry the detection of very small amounts of sphingolipids can be accomplished. The two major approaches of sphingolipidomic studies are liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry based methods and shotgun lipidomics.^1,2 These techniques require the use of internal standards for each class of sphingolipid expected to be found in a sample. Stable isotope standards can be easily detected by mass spectrometry while demonstrating nearly identical physical properties to natural sphingolipids. This is very important to ensure similar extraction properties and signal response between the analytes and the internal standards.

References:

1. X. Han and X. Jiang, "A review of lipidomic technologies applicable to sphingolipidomics and their relevant applications" Eur J Lipid Sci Technol. Vol. 111(1) pp. 39-52, 2009
2. A. Futerman and Y. Hannun, "The complex life of simple sphingolipids" EMBO Reports" Vol. 5 pp. 777-782, 2004