Isolation and quantitative analysis of phosphatidylglycerol and glycolipid molecular species using reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography with flame ionization detection.

Conditions are described for the quantitative analysis of phosphatidylglycerol and plant glycolipid molecular species by reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography employing a commercially available flame ionization detector. Direct detection on a mass basis overcomes the problem of poor detectability found with most natural lipids. Effective mobile phases composed primarily of volatile solvents are described. Splitting of the column eluate stream allows a portion of each individual molecular species to be recovered for other types of analysis.