Abstract
Analysis of lipids and hydrocarbons is performed frequently in recent and ancient plant tissues, soils, sediments, peat deposits, oil, rocks, anthropogenic artifacts (archeological samples), and other materials to trace the contribution of different biological and anthropogenic sources of organic matter as well as environmental changes and the fate of organic matter like degradation. The approaches for the analysis of lipids and hydrocarbons strongly vary from traditional methodologies like thin-layer chromatography to universal approaches like pyrolysis, whereas the preparative separation of lipid fractions based on their polarity enables gas-chromatographic analyses of single fractions and compound-specific analysis of stable (2H/1H, 13C/12C) and radioactive (14C) isotope compositions. Often, lipid extraction operationally defines a subfraction of total lipids. On the one hand, free extractable lipids are obtained by extraction with organic solvents, whereas on the other hand, total samples or extraction residues are extracted for more polar lipid fractions using highly polar organic solvents and water, to release bound lipids. Procedures for extraction of free extractable lipids are diverse and mainly defined by the target of research and availability of instrumentation. In the current protocol, state-of-the-art techniques for the investigation of free extractable lipids in various materials are explained, which can be applied even in laboratory environments with limited technical equipment. The protocols cover sample preparation, extraction, purification, analysis, as well as a brief overview of the data evaluation using lipid molecular proxies and compound-specific isotopes.
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Wiesenberg, G.L.B., Gocke, M.I. (2015). Analysis of Lipids and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons as Indicators of Past and Present (Micro)Biological Activity. In: McGenity, T., Timmis, K., Nogales, B. (eds) Hydrocarbon and Lipid Microbiology Protocols. Springer Protocols Handbooks. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/8623_2015_157
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/8623_2015_157
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