Gas Chromatography for Omega-3 (ω-3) Fatty Acid Profiles of Microalgae

There are various types of fatty acids, which are essential nutrients for humans and affect the balance of dietary structure, endocrine stability, and the occurrence of metabolic syndrome. The accurate determination of fatty acid content in food, serum, and metabolite samples is of great significance for food quality control, disease monitoring, and health assessment. Gas chromatography analysis, one of the important instrumental analysis methods, is the characteristics of high separation efficiency, fast analysis speed, high sensitivity, accurate qualitative and quantitative analysis results for complex multicomponent mixtures, easy automation, and high selectivity. It is widely used in the analysis of fatty acids. In this chapter, we detailed the method for detecting omega-3 (ω-3) fatty acids (eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA)) of microalgae, which also provide important high-throughput pathway for studying lipidLipid metabolism in microalgae.