Combination of silver ion and reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography in the fractionation of herring oil triacylglycerols

Triacylglycerols from North Atlantic herring (Clupea harengus) were separated according to the degree of unsaturation by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) in the silver ion mode. Each of the eleven fractions collected was then separated by reversed- phase HPLC, which in these circumstances separated the molecules according to the combined chain- lengths of the fatty acyl residues only. One hundred thirty fractions were obtained for fatty acid analysis. Almost 50% of the triacylglycerol molecules had six or more double bonds in their fatty acyl residues. Saturated-dimonoenes and disaturated- monoenes, 18.9% and 10.4%, respectively, were the most plentiful fractions of the more saturated species. Such a complex mixture of molecules was present that the most abundant subfractions from reversed- phase HPLC represented less than 5% of the total. Indeed, the largest single molecular species 16:0- 22:l- 22:6(n− 3)] represented only 2.8% of the total. These sequential analyses by complementary techniques made it possible to obtain a considerable amount of information on the composition of molecular species, but it was still not possible to identify all components.