Analysis of lipoxygenase kinetics by high-performance liquid chromatography with a polymer column

Abstract

Soybean lipoxygenase (LOX; EC 1.12.11.12) catalyzes the oxygenation of polyunsaturated fatty acids, acylglycerols and phosphoglycerols, producing a regio-and enantiospecific hydroperoxide product. The goal of this work was to measure the relative rate of LOX-catalyzed oxidation of mixtures of lipids containing linoleate, using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and a light-scattering detector (LSD). Previous literature sugested that reversed-phase HPLC with silicabased columns could be used for the separation of individual fatty acids, acylglycerols, phosphoglycerides and their oxidation products. However, these columns produced ineffective separations of phosphoglycerides unless choline chloride and a strong base, such as KOH, are present in the mobile phase. Such modifiers precluded the use of the LSD. It was found that a reversed-phase column based upon an organic polymer support, rather than on silica, was able to separate these mixtures with a ternary solvent gradient of methanol/water/acetonitrile without the need for the addition of modifiers. The oxidation time course of a mixture of linoleic acid, trilinolein and 1-linoleoyl-2-stearoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine was followed using the developed HPLC method. The results showed that trilinolein and phosphatidylcholine reacted at one-tenth the rate of linoleic acid. The diacylglycerol, 1,3-dilinolein, was oxidized at a rate that was approximately 40% that of linoleic acid, with the formation of mono-and dihydroperoxides as well as other unidentified products.