Procedures for structural analysis of fatty acids and high-performance liquid chromatographic (silver ion, adsorption, reversed-phase and chiral) analysis of lipids are in the forefront of developments. Supercritical-fluid chromatography is making a lesser impact.A ny selection of the most interesting and va l u abl e a dvances in the ch ro m at ographic analysis of lipids over the last few ye a rs must be a subjective one, conditioned by the ex p e rience of the author. With this caveat, I suggest that procedures for structural analysis of fatty acids must be high on any list, and those involving gas chromatography-mass spectrometry in particular. Similarly, m e t h o d o l ogy involving high-perfo rmance liquid ch ro m at ography (HPLC) has been developing apace, especially in the area of silver ion chromatography, lipid class analysis and molecular species analysis. The increasing use of evaporative light-scattering detection has greatly assisted with the last. With such instruments, the mobile phase coming from the end of the HPLC column is evaporated in a stream of air in a heated chamber; the solute does not evaporate, but is nebulized and carried as minute droplets through a light beam, which is reflected and refracted. The amount of scattered light is measured by a photomultiplier tube and bears a relationship to the concentration of material eluted from the column. In that they will respond to any lipid that does not evaporate before passing through the light beam, such There has also been a great deal of interest in the application of supercritical-fluid chromatography to the analysis of lipids. However, in my opinion, there is still little that can be done by this technique that is not better accomplished by GC or HPLC. A comprehensive r eview of this methodology has also appeared [2].
Structural analysis of fatty acidsThe potential of mass spectrometry for identification of fatty acids of natural origin has been evident for many years, but there were few reports of structural analyses on real samples as opposed to model compounds until re l at ive ly re c e n t ly. The problem has been largely solved by the use of specific amide or ester derivatives, which following ionization in the mass spectrometer stabilize the charge on a nitrogen atom remote from the structural features of interest. Radical-induced cleavage predominates in the aliphatic chain and distinctive fragmentations are achieved according to the position of double bonds, b ra n ch-points or ring stru c t u res. In p a rt i c u l a r, the use fi rst of py rro l i d e, and subsequently of picolinyl ester or 2-alkenyl-4,4-dimethyloxazoline (DMOX) derivatives, of fatty acids permits GC-MS to be employed for the separation and characterisation of these compounds from natural lipids. The technique has been aided by the ava i l ability of improved cap i l l a ry columns. Indeed, s u ch derivatives only began to be used widely when GC columns of fused silica became available, although initially it was only possible to use non-polar stationary ph...