The unavailability of appropriate quality assurance/quality control materials in many lipidomics applications poses a significant challenge for lipidomics research. It is recommended that samples with certified values and/or consensus estimates, such as NIST SRM 1950–Metabolites in Frozen Human Plasma, be implemented in routine analyses to enable community-wide comparisons of lipidomics results and analytical workflows. Herein, we applied a nontargeted lipidomics method for the analysis of a new human plasma reference material suite developed by NIST (hypertriglyceridemic, diabetic, and African-American plasma pools), in addition to SRM 1950. We identified specific lipidomics fingerprints associated with each sample type, including lauric acid–containing lipids and elevated triacylglycerol levels in hypertriglyceridemic plasma, palmitoleic acid–containing lipids in diabetic plasma, and oxidized fatty acid–containing phospholipids in African-American plasma. This work highlights the importance of developing and profiling application-specific reference materials, while establishing reference data that may be used for system suitability and/or quality control metrics.

Graphical abstract

在许多脂质组学应用中，缺乏合适的质量保证/质量控制材料，对脂质组学研究提出了重大挑战。建议在常规分析中使用具有认证值和/或共识性估计值的样品，例如NIST SRM 1950-冷冻人血浆中的代谢物，以在社区范围内比较脂质组学结果和分析工作流程。在本文中，除了SRM 1950外，我们还应用了非靶向脂质组学方法来分析由NIST（高甘油三酸酯，糖尿病和非裔美国人血浆库）开发的新型人血浆参考材料套件。我们确定了与每个样品相关的特定脂质组学指纹类型，包括高甘油三酸酯血症血浆中含有月桂酸的脂质和升高的三酰基甘油水平，糖尿病血浆中含有棕榈油酸的脂质，而非裔美国人血浆中含有氧化脂肪酸的磷脂。这项工作突出了开发和分析特定于应用程序的参考资料的重要性，同时建立了可用于系统适用性和/或质量控制指标的参考数据。

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