The discovery of secondary metabolites with roles in pathogen defence has been catalysed in recent years with technical advances in mass spectrometry and high throughput metabolite profiling. Many of the metabolites described in this review have been identified via gas chromatography and headspace analysis of volatiles coupled to mass spectrometers in addition to liquid chromatography-mass

spectrometry and occasionally nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. The current bottleneck in these techniques is the processing of the Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical large data sets generated and positive identification of all the compounds analysed.
A cellular BMS-354825 manufacturer lipidome is a very complicated system, potentially comprised of hundreds of thousands of individual lipid molecular species [1,2]. These species are classified into different classes based on their polar head groups [3] and subclasses of a class according to the linkages of the aliphatic chains [4,5]. Different classes, subclasses, and molecular species of lipids Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical play a multitude of diverse roles in cellular functions ranging from Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical membrane structural components to lipid second messengers [6]. Any perturbation of a biological system is expected to give rise to changes in the abundance and/or composition of the lipid pool. The newly-emerged discipline, lipidomics, is to determine these changes, to locate the place(s)

(subcellular membrane compartments and domains) where the changes occur, to delineate the biochemical mechanisms underpinning the changes, to determine the relationship of the changed lipids with other neighboring lipids or proteins in a spatial Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical and temporal manner, etc. [7]. In the field of lipidomics, accurate quantification of individual lipid species is a major, yet challenging component. Quantification in omics generally falls into two categories, i.e., relative and absolute Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical quantifications. The former measures the pattern change of the lipid species in a lipidome, which can be used as a tool for readout after stimulation or for biomarker discovery. The latter determines the mass levels

of individual lipid species, and then each individual lipid subclass and class of a lipidome. Measurement of the changed mass levels of individual lipid class, subclass, and molecular species is critical for elucidation of biochemical mechanism(s) responsible for the changes and for pathway/network analysis in addition to serving as a tool for readout after stimulation or for either biomarker discovery. Thus, only the latter case is extensively discussed. It should be pointed out that the word “quantification” to chemists and biochemists might lead to different expectations. To a chemist, quantification must be very “accurate”. All attempts in each step of a quantitative analysis from sampling to data processing would be made to achieve the highest degree of accuracy and/or precision possible.