Abstract
Lecithin can be prepared on a relatively large scale, free of colored impurities, by a simple two-column procedure. Commercial crude egg lecithin is partially purified by a single-step passage through an alumina column. It is then purified by a two-step passage through a prepacked, commercial silica gel column. The lecithin is prepared in solvent-free form for weighing by lyophilization from cyclohexane. Toxic solvents (chloroform and methanol) are avoided by the use of ethanol, isopropanol, hexane, and water. The elutions are easily monitored by a flow cell in an ordinary spectrophotometer set at 215 nm. Study of the column parameters has made it possible to use heavy loads with a relatively small column and minimal solvent.
Highlights
Marsh and Holzbach ( 5 ) applied their total crude lecithin directly to the first alumina column, but we column
Thin-layerchromatography was carriedouton silica gel plates with chloroform-methanol-water 60:35:8T. he spots were examined with a phospholipisdpray (6) followed by a charring spray (7)
While the heavy load we applied did not allow removal of sphingomyelin, it is fortunate that the starting material was already very low insphingomyelincontent
Summary
Marsh and Holzbach (5) introducedthe idea of starting with crude commercial egg lecithin instead of Norman S. Marsh and Holzbach ( 5 ) applied their total crude lecithin directly to the first alumina column, but we column It is purified by a two-step passage through found that our lecithin did not dissolve completely in a prepacked, commercial silica gel column. To obtainahigh level of final purification, we Supplementarkyey words lyophilization from cyclohexane turned to a commercially packed preparative column optical column monitoring of silica gel. This could be operated at a high speed, yet could be heavily loaded because most of the im-. A prepacked silica gel of alumina particles, which are readily abraded in column(Lobar, size B, 2.5 x 31cm) was obtained handling,and lecithin in highconcentrations may from EM Laboratories,Elmsford, NY.
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