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Review
. 2018 Dec 14;8(4):174.
doi: 10.3390/biom8040174.

Quantification of Lipids: Model, Reality, and Compromise

Spiro Khoury  1   2 , Cécile Canlet  3   4 , Marlène Z Lacroix  5 , Olivier Berdeaux  6   7 , Juliette Jouhet  8   9 , Justine Bertrand-Michel  10   11
Affiliations
Review

Quantification of Lipids: Model, Reality, and Compromise

Spiro Khoury et al. Biomolecules. .

Abstract

Lipids are key molecules in various biological processes, thus their quantification is a crucial point in a lot of studies and should be taken into account in lipidomics development. This family is complex and presents a very large diversity of structures, so analyzing and quantifying all this diversity is a real challenge. In this review, the different techniques to analyze lipids will be presented: from nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to mass spectrometry (with and without chromatography) including universal detectors. First of all, the state of the art of quantification, with the definitions of terms and protocol standardization, will be presented with quantitative lipidomics in mind, and then technical considerations and limitations of analytical chemistry's tools, such as NMR, mass spectrometry and universal detectors, will be discussed, particularly in terms of absolute quantification.

Keywords: lipidomic; mass spectrometry; nuclear magnetic resonance; quantification; universal detector.

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Conflict of interest statement

All authors declare no conflict of interest.

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