Department of Agricultural Chemistry, National Taiwan University, Taipei 10617, Taiwan
‡Department of Food Science and Nutrition, Meiho University, Pingtung County 91202, Taiwan
*S Supporting Information
ABSTRACT: Polyenylphosphatidylcholine (PPC), a subgroup of the bioactive agents in phosphatidylcholine (PC), has been
indicated to possess liver-protective effects. This study aimed to investigate a promising and feasible method to determine PC
molecular species with a reverse phase (RP) high-performance liquid chromatograph (HPLC) equipped with an evaporative light
scattering detector (ELSD). Chromatography was achieved using a C30 column and an isocratic mobile phase consisting of
acetonitrile/methanol/triethylamine (40/58/2, v/v/v) at a flow rate of 1 mL/min, and ELSD detection was performed using 80
°C for the drift tube and an air flow rate of 1.8 L/min. To identify individual peaks on the chromatogram, MALDI-TOF-MS was
employed for initial detection, and then the results were used to investigate the relationship between the retention time and fatty
acyl chains of each PC molecule. A linear correlation was observed between the retention time and theoretical carbon number
(TCN) of individual PC species. The compositions of PC molecular species in soybean and sunflower lecithins were similar to
