LC-MS/MS phospholipid bio-analysis for studying bacterium population in biogas fermentation

Profiling phospholipids has been an established method for studying the microorganism population because different bacteria produce their unique phospholipids in the cell membrane. It is also the case for the microorganisms involved in biogas fermentation. However, the structure information of phospholipids is lost when the conventional techniques such as GC and GC-MS are applied because of the derivatization steps (hydrolysis, especially). Here we are going to use mainly LC-MS and LC-MS/MS techniques to identidify phospholipid molecular species and to quantify phospholipids extracted from bacteria involved in biogas fermentation. The corresponding lipid extraction and fractionation methods will also be developed and optimized.