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New insights in hemp chemical composition: a comprehensive polar lipidome characterization by combining solid phase enrichment, high-resolution mass spectrometry, and cheminformatics

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Abstract

The chemical composition of Cannabis sativa L. has been extensively investigated for several years; nevertheless, a detailed lipidome characterization is completely lacking in the literature. To achieve this goal, an extraction and enrichment procedure was developed for the characterization of phospholipids and sulfolipids. Firstly, a study on the solid-liquid extraction was performed, to maximize the recovery of the considered lipids; the best procedure consisted of a simple extraction with a mixture of methanol and chloroform (1:1, v/v). The hemp extracts were analyzed by ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography coupled to high-resolution mass spectrometry and lipids were tentatively identified by Lipostar. To improve the number of identifications, an enrichment method, based on graphitized carbon black solid phase extraction, was evaluated to fractionate phospholipids and sulfolipids into separate eluates. Recovery and matrix effects of the procedure were determined on a mixture of standard lipids, containing representative compounds for each considered lipid class. The optimized method allowed the tentative identification of 189 lipids, including 51 phospholipids and 80 sulfolipids, in the first and second fractions, respectively. The detection of only 6 sulfolipids in the first fraction and 9 phospholipids in the second fraction proved the efficacy of the fractionation method, which also allowed the number of lipid identifications to be increased compared to the same procedure without enrichment, which scored 100 lipids. Finally, a semi-quantitative analysis permitted the hemp polar lipidome to be characterized. The results of this study allow knowledge of the hemp chemical composition to be improved with a detailed description of its phospho- and sulfolipid profiles.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Professor Gabriele Cruciani of Perugia University for providing us the Lipostar software and Dr. Laura Goracci for the technical assistance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry, Università di Roma “La Sapienza”, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00185, Rome, Italy

    Michela Antonelli, Barbara Benedetti, Andrea Cerrato, Carmela Maria Montone, Susy Piovesana & Aldo Laganà

  2. Department of Life Sciences, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Via Giuseppe Campi 287, 41125, Modena, Italy

    Giuseppe Cannazza & Cinzia Citti

  3. Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, University of Copenhagen, Nørre Allé 51, 2200, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Giuseppe Cannazza

  4. CNR NANOTEC, Campus Ecotekne, University of Salento, Via Monteroni, 73100, Lecce, Italy

    Aldo Laganà

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  1. Michela Antonelli
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Correspondence to Carmela Maria Montone.

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Antonelli, M., Benedetti, B., Cannazza, G. et al. New insights in hemp chemical composition: a comprehensive polar lipidome characterization by combining solid phase enrichment, high-resolution mass spectrometry, and cheminformatics. Anal Bioanal Chem 412, 413–423 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-019-02247-6

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