Liquid Chromatography: Chapter 9. Separation of Lipids

Lipids are biomolecules with an enormous structural diversity. The most important are fatty acids, glycolipids, phospholipids, sphingolipids and sterols. They are usually isolated by extraction and separated using thin-layer chromatography and normal-phase, silver-ion, and nonaqueous reversed-phase liquid chromatography. Many of these compounds lack chromophores and are detected by evaporative light scattering, refractive index or mass spectrometric detection. Coupled-column systems are employed for the separation of complex lipid extracts. Lipidomics is a rather new area in which lipid profiles are used to identify physiologically important information. Liquid chromatography plays an important role in all aspects of the isolation, identification and determination of lipid functions in biological systems.