Examining Heat Treatment for Stabilization of the Lipidome

What is it about?

Lipids, which are a group of biological molecules which are oily or waxy, are essential for all life. Therefore when humans and other life become unhealthy lipids will often also change, and measuring this change in lipids can lead to new clinical tests and solving disease. One problem in lipid measurement is that during preparation of samples for analysis, enzymes are accidentally released from cell compartments, and act the same as a demolition team, destroying all the cell structures in order to make room for new cell growth. This rapid and unwanted destruction of lipid structure makes it challenging to understand what was actually happening before we manipulated the sample. Therefore we employed a state-of-the-art technology for rapidly heating a sample in order to destroy the enzymes (prevent the demolition team from doing their work). We found that we had higher concentrations of intact lipids and lower concentration of lipid breakdown products.

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