The Extraction And Purification Of Phosphatidylcholine In Antarctic Krill (euphausia Superba)

Antarctic krill a biological resource which comes from outside China, has been listed inthe economic development strategy of China’s“12th Five-year Plan". Exploitation andutilization of Antarctic krill are of significance. The Antarctic krill oil is abundant inphospholipids which contain high phosphatidylcholine（PC）content. PC has specialphysiological functions, so the separation and purification of PC from the Antarctic krill play animportant role in the further study of its metabolic mechanism, physiological role, and the rangeof its applications and exploitations. This article will illustrate the extraction and purification ofPC from the Antarctic krill in the following aspects.The optimal conditions of Antarctic krill oil extraction could be determinedusing orthogonaltest.Solvent extraction was utilized to extract the oil out of dried shrimps. Extraction rate andcontent of phospholipids were used as criteria to evaluate the extraction effect. N-hexane wasdetermined to be the best extraction agent through the single factor experiment. Then three levelsof Single Factor Experiment were conducted according to the extraction temperature,solid-liquid ratio, and extraction time. The orthogonal test shows that the optimum conditions ofoil extraction were: 30°C(extraction temperature), 1:8(solid-liquid ratio), and 90min(extractiontime). PC was preliminarily collected and purified by acetone precipitation. Phospholipidssample containing 23.26% PC were obtained. This part of our research provided theoretical basisfor pilot production and has important economic and theoretical values.PC can be separated and purified by column chromatography. Phospholipids sample with a23.36% PC content was used as raw material in this part. The purity and yield of PC were usedas evaluation index. Effects of the species of stationary phase, loading quantities, type of eluentand its rate, as the optimum conditions on the purification of PC were investigated. The resultsshowed that the optimal purification conditions are: the stationary phase was 200-300 silica gel,the eluent was trichloromethane and methanol with the ratio of 1:1(v/v), loading density was 1:5,velocity of flow was 4ml/min, and the loading amount of the raw material was 0.0200g/1g. Thepurity of PC obtained was 92.67% and the yield was over 71.26%. It could provide theoreticalreference for the production of high-purity PC.The obtained substance was determined to be PC by comparing it with PC standard usinghigh performance thin layer chromatography (HP-TLC). The research of separation andpurification of PC from Antarctic krill has not been reported presently. In this paper, we obtained PC with purity as high as over 90% by the innovative acetone extraction method from Antarctickrill. This study would lay a solid foundation for further study of molecular structure andmolecular species of PC in the Antarctic krill., It would also provide theoretical references forthe application of PC in Antarctic krill in medicine and food in the future.