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ARS Home » Plains Area » Grand Forks, North Dakota » Grand Forks Human Nutrition Research Center » Dietary Prevention of Obesity-related Disease Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #377254
Research Project: Food Factors, Meal Patterns, and Lipoproteins

Location: Dietary Prevention of Obesity-related Disease Research

Title: Simple, rapid lipidomic analysis of triacylglycerols in bovine milk by infusion-electrospray mass spectrometry

Author
item Bukowski, Michael
item Picklo, Matthew

Submitted to: Lipids
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 10/26/2020
Publication Date: 3/17/2021
Citation: Bukowski, M.R., Picklo, M.J. 2021. Simple, rapid lipidomic analysis of triacylglycerols in bovine milk by infusion-electrospray mass spectrometry. Lipids. 56:243-255. https://doi.org/10.1002/lipd.12292.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/lipd.12292

Interpretive Summary: Bovine milk is an important source of nutrients for most Americans. Milk contains different types of fat with triacylglycerols (TAG) comprising the major form of fat. In this work, we combined a facile, fast method to isolate milk TAG from the milk matrix with a fast, infusion-based method of mass spectrometric detection. This “dilute and shoot” means of analyzing TAG in milk represents a substantial improvement in milk fat analysis. This rapid and accurate method to determine the types of TAG in milk benefits dairy research and dairy production.

Technical Abstract: Bovine milk is a complex mixture of lipids, proteins, carbohydrates and other factors of which lipids comprise 3-5% of the total mass. Rapid analysis and characterization of the triacylglycerols (TAG) that comprise about 95% of the total lipid is daunting given the numerous TAG species. In the attached methods paper we demonstrate an improved method for identifying quantifying TAG species by infusion-based “shotgun” lipidomics. Because of the broad range of TAG species in milk, a single internal standard was insufficient for the analysis and required sectioning the spectrum into three portions based upon mass range to provide accurate quantitation of TAG species. Isobaric phospholipid interferences were removed using a simple dispersive solid-phase extraction step. Using this method, > 100 TAG species were quantitated by acyl carbon number and desaturation level in a sample of commercially purchased bovine milk.