Analysis of Coenzyme Qs and Their Relationship with Cardiolipin Content in Biological Samples by Shotgun Lipidomics

摘要

A simple analytical method based on the MDMS-SL strategy was established to identify and quantify CoQ species present in biological samples. Adduction of lithium ions to CoQ species leads to enhance the ionization by ESI-MS, and increase the identification specificity due to the presence of a unique set of fragment ions. This method possessed high reproducibility (> 93%), nearly 4 orders of linear dynamic range, and a limit of detection as lower as 117 amol/μL. Through determination of the CoQ and CL species levels in myocardial tissues between db/db mice and their WT controls, we found that the higher CoQ amounts were probably associated with lower levels of tetra18:2 CL molecular species in diabetes, indicating a bioenergetic inefficiency condition. We believe that development of this new method could facilitate identifying the importance of CoQ species in mitochondrial bioenergetics.