Fig. 2.

A representative two-dimensional ESI/MS analysis of triacylglycerol molecular species in rat superior mesenteric ganglial lipid extracts. The first dimension ESI mass spectrum was obtained (the topmost trace) in the positive-ion mode using intrasource separation. Next, neutral loss (NL) scans of all naturally-occurring aliphatic chains (i.e. the building blocks of TAG molecular species) of lipid extracts of rat superior mesenteric ganglia were acquired and used to identify the molecular species assignments, deconvolute isobaric molecular species and quantify triacylglycerol individual molecular species by comparisons with a selected internal standard. Each MS or MS/MS trace of the 2D ESI mass spectrum was acquired by sequentially programmed custom scans operating under Xcalibur software as described in Materials and methods. All mass spectral traces were displayed after normalization to the base peak in the individual trace.