The isolation of egg phosphatidyl choline by an adsorption column technique.

The isolation of phosphatidyl choline which contains all of its nitrogen as choline, phosphorus as glycerophosphate, and has a relatively high iodine number, has posed a problem for some time. The most widely used method has been that of Levene and Rolf (l), as modified by Pangborn (24), wherein this lipide is isolated through a cadmium chloride complex. Sinclair (5) has described a procedure for the isolation of egg lecithin involving the use of temperature-solvent fractionation. Adsorbents have been used to a limited extent in the fractionation of the complex phosphorus-containing lipides. Thannhauser and Setz (6) showed that the cerebrosides of spleen could be separated from the sphingomyelins through the use of an aluminum oxide column. Using magnesium oxide as the adsorbent, Taurog et al. (7) effected a separation of the liver choline-containing phospholipides. The present report is a further development of the adsorption technique, resulting in a simple method for the isolation of phosphatidyl choline from mixed egg phospholipides.