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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2013 Jan 1.
Published in final edited form as: Mass Spectrom Rev. 2011 Jul 13;31(1):134–178. doi: 10.1002/mas.20342

FIGURE 8.

FIGURE 8

General structure of sphingoid-based lipids with three building blocks. Building block I represents a different polar moiety (linked to the oxygen at the C1 position of sphingoid backbone). Building block II represents fatty acyl chains (acylated to the primary amine at the C2 position of sphingoid backbone) with or without the presence of a hydroxy group, which is usually located at the alpha or omega position. Building block III represents the aliphatic chains in all of possible sphingoid backbones, which are carbon-carbon linked to the C3 position of sphingoid backbones and vary with the aliphatic chain length, degree of unsaturation, the presence of branch, and the presence of an additional hydroxy group.