Optimization of a chromatographic method for the gram-scale preparative fractionation of soybean phospholipids

Natural phospholipids: Occurrence, biosynthesis, separation, identification, and beneficial health aspects

During the last years, phospholipids (PLs) have attracted great attention because of their crucial roles in providing nutritional values, technological and medical applications. There are considerable proofs that PLs have unique nutritional benefits on human health, such as reducing cholesterol absorption, improving liver functions, and decreasing the risk of cardiovascular diseases. PLs are the main structural lipid components of cell and organelle membranes in all living organisms, and therefore, they occur in all organisms and the derived food products. PLs are distinguished by the presence of a hydrophilic head and a hydrophobic tail, consequently they possess amphiphilic features. Due to their unique characteristics, the extraction, separation, and identification of PLs are critical issues to be concerned. This review is focused on the content of PLs classes in several sources (including milk, vegetable oils, egg yolk, and mitochondria). As well, it highlights PLs biosynthesis, and the methodologies applied for PLs extraction and separation, such as solvent extraction and solid-phase extraction. In addition, the determination and quantification of PLs classes by using thin layer chromatography, high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with different detectors, and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy techniques.

Separation and purification of phosphatidylcholine and phosphatidylethanolamine from soybean degummed oil residues by using solvent extraction and column chromatography

Natural phosphatidylcholine (PC) and phosphatidylethanolamine (PE) were separated and purified from soybean degummed oil residues in this work. Crude PC and PE were first separated from degummed oil residues by extraction with 95% ethanol, and then the crude PC and PE were used as raw materials to prepare high purity PC and PE by using column chromatography of silica gel (100-200 mesh) with different eluents and elution modes. The high purity PC (content > 90%) was obtained from the crude PC by using isocratic elution with methanol as eluent. Compared with the methods reported by using isocratic elution with mixed solvents as eluent or gradient elution, the procedure proposed exhibits low cost and industry potentialities because of some advantages, such as operation simplicity, cheap equipment and solvent to be recovered easily. The purity of the PE product prepared from the crude PE was more than 75%. The gradient elution was preferable to isocratic elution for reducing the elution time and eluent consumption when to prepare PE from the crude PE. The effects of loading amount and the flow-rate on separation efficiency were also investigated. For obtaining high separation efficiency, the loading amount should be less than 2.0 g crude PC or PE/100 g silica gel, and the flow-rate should be controlled under 4 ml/min for crude PC and 3 ml/min for crude PE, respectively.

Phosphatidylcholine isolation from egg yolk phospholipids by high-performance liquid chromatography

Cell membrane components have been increasingly recognized as important biochemicals in the fields of biochemistry and pharmacy due to their relationship with metabolite transport in the cells. Among the components, phosphatidylcholine (PC) is considered a valuable biochemical, because it is difficult to commercialize. PC demand has been largely increased in the fields of the nutrient, cosmetic and pharmacy industries, and so the development of a preparative chromatography process is critical to supply a low-cost PC. In this study, we investigated the HPLC separation of phospholipid originated from egg yolk, which contains 80% (w/w) PC and 15% (w/w) phosphatidylethanolamine. Column temperature, mobile phase composition and its flow-rate and kinds of stationary phase were varied to understand the effectiveness of PC separation. For studying the relationship between recovery yield and sample loading amount in HPLC, we performed overloading experiments. In this way, we successfully separated PC with over 99% purity and with 98% yield with the following HPLC operating conditions; pure methanol as a mobile phase, 2.0 ml/min flow-rate and 1000 mg/ml feed concentration in a KR-100-10SIL column.