Phospholipids play important roles, not only as membranous components, but also as signaling molecules concerning many cellular events. To elucidate the function of phospholipids, it is necessary to analyze their classes, subclasses, and molecular species.
Recently, in the analysis of phospholipids, the application of mass spectrometry (MS) has become increasingly popular. Among the several methods of ionization, electrospray ionization (ESI) and matrix assisted lazer desorption/ionization (MALDI) seem to be the most moderate methods. Since there are several kinds of mass spectrometer, the model of MS suitable for the own purpose should be selected.
Also, there are several effective methods for MS analysis of lipid. ESIMS enables rapid and sensitive analyses of phospholipids by direct connection with liquid chromatography (LC-MS). In addition to, ESIMS/MS analysis is necessary for more detailed annotation of each molecular species. In this review, we explain the feature of mass spectrometers (ex. triple quadrupole, quadrupole-TOF), and the application of MS for lipid analysis.

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“LIPID_BANK for Web” is a database system offering information on lipids over the Internet (http//lipidbank.jp/). This database is developed by the members of the Japanese Conference of the Biochemistry of Lipids, and the first lipid database open to the world from Japan. The database is composed of three parts : 1) The factual data including name of the lipid, chemical and physical properties, information of biological activities, genetic information, etc., 2) The graphic data including chemical structure, chromatogram, IR or NMR spectra and other graphic data, and 3) The related reference data. This article describes the brief history of the “LIPID_BANK for Web” and how to use the database and its' future scope. In near future, the database will be linked to the other databases, such as, biological active lipid database, genomic-database, metabolome database, sugar-database, enzyme-database. etc. And it will contribute to the future development of bioinformatics.

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