Structural characterization of triacylglycerols using electrospray ionization‐MSn ion‐trap MS

Abstract Structural analysis of mixtures of TAG requires the determination of the M.W. of each compound, the characterization of the structure(s) of the individual FA substituents, and identification of the relative disposition of the acyl groups on the glycerol backbone (regiospecificity). In this study we demonstrated that ion‐trap MS in combination with electrospray ionization provides an easy and detailed characterization of the TAG structure. We showed that electrospray mass spectra are characterized by intense molecular ion adducts and that the acyl group disposition on the TAG backbone can be determined on the basis of relatively well‐defined quantitative differences of fragment ions produced from MS2 data. Moreover, additional spectral data can be generated by MS3 experiments on moieties containing individual acyl ion fragments. When hyphenated with chromatographic separations ion‐trap electrospray MS might become a routine and powerful way to analyze TAG mixtures.