Just a Little TLC

Eriksen, Dawn

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/49081 Copy

Description

Title

Just a Little TLC

Author(s)

Eriksen, Dawn

Issue Date

2014-05

Keyword(s)

Chemical Engineering

Abstract

Just a little TLC (Thin Layer Chromatography ) can separate the many lipids formed within a microbial cell. Chromatography is a standard analytical chemistry strategy to distinguish different components of a mixture, such as different lipids of the cell.The technique relies on a mobile phase, which will drive the analyte or compounds of interest through the stationary phase. The compounds will travel through the stationary phase at different speeds and allow each compound to be separated. The partitioning between compounds can be based on size or charge. In this experiment, we wanted to distinguish the different types of lipids or fatty acids created by a microbial cell. The cells were lysed, the lipids were extracted, applied to the TLC plate, and allowed to separate. This image is the visualization of these lipids using 2-7-dichlorofluorescein under a long-wave UV light. We can identify a different lipid profile of samples looking at the variations in the spots. The first three samples are biological replicates and display a different lipid composition compared to the last three samples,biological replicates of another micro-organism. This technique is extremely helpful to isolate specific fatty acids of interest for further analysis.

Type of Resource

• text
• image

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/49081

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2014 Dawn Eriksen

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