Characterization by high-performance liquid chromatography/electrospray ionization quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry of the lipid fraction of Spirulina platensis pressurized ethanol extract

摘要

Microalgae have been suggested as a potential source for new functional ingredients, making\udpossible the development of new functional foods from natural origin. Among the natural ingredients,\udpolyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) have generally been identified as an interesting group of\udcompounds with biological activity, mainly related to their anti-inflammatory properties. In this\udregard, the use of environmentally friendly extraction procedures (e.g. pressurized liquid extraction,\udPLE) to obtain such natural ingredients is also becoming necessary. In this work, an exhaustive\udcharacterization of the lipid fraction of a pressurized ethanolic extract of the microalga Spirulina\udplatensis is carried out. To achieve this objective high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)\udcoupled to quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (QTOF-MS) is employed. The use of the\udQTOF analyzer allows the selection and isolation of precursor ions as well as providing the high\udefficiency, sensitivity and mass accuracy required. By means of this powerful hyphenated technique,\udit was possible to identify several polar lipids in an extract of S. platensis (some of them, to our\udknowledge, described for the first time in this work), including four free fatty acids, four monogalactosyl\udmonoacylglycerols, three phosphatidylglycerols and two sulfoquinovosyl diacylglycerols.