Qualitative analysis of lipids from plants is probably within the realm of DIY through thin layer chromatography, but quantifying fatty acid contents takes big expensive machines. http://www.jove.com/video/2518/arabidopsis-thaliana-polar-glycerolipid-profiling-thin-layer This video was produced by my lab and explains TLC-gas chromatography, the other widely used method is liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (even more expensive and complicated). With TLC you can separate the general classes of lipids (different groups on the glycerol backbone) on a silica plate, then you stain with different dyes that stain different types of lipids. This gives you a nice visual qualitative measure of the lipids present. To quantify the fatty acids in the lipid of interest we scrape it from the plate and perform a Fatty Acid Methyl Extraction (FAME - this uses methanol, HCl, and heat) that transfers the fatty acids off the glycerol and attaches the carboxyl to a methyl to form a fatty acid methyl ester (this is the reaction that also makes biodiesel). Nonpolar FAMEs are extracted in a nonpolar phase (hexane) from the aqueous phase (salt water and unreacted catalyst acid and alcohol). FAMEs of different lengths and saturation are quantified by gas chromatography. Alternatively mass spec could be used with a different preparation but that is even more expensive.
On Monday, November 5, 2012 3:37:16 AM UTC-5, Matthias Bock wrote:
I would be very interested in this chromatography column configuration. I am currently trying to separate and quantify the fatty acid composition of different plant oils.
Please keep me/us posted! :-)Cheers! Matthias
-- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups DIYbio group. To post to this group, send email to diybio@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to diybio+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at https://groups.google.com/d/forum/diybio?hl=en
Learn more at www.diybio.org
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "DIYbio" group.
To post to this group, send email to diybio@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to diybio+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/diybio?hl=en.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/diybio/-/MkYI7JxpMRwJ.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
0 comments:
Post a Comment