A rapid procedure for elimination of non-polar lipids hampering the usual polar lipid extraction and TLC separation.

A new and rapid method is proposed for extraction of non-polar lipids from tissues where they are present as abundant components which can interfere with the usual procedures of lipid extraction and TLC separation, and hamper, in particular, sulphatide visualization. A solvent more hydrophobic than chloroform, i.e. n-hexane, was utilized to remove the neutral lipids from samples of female rabbit parotid gland, and the n-hexane phase was used for TLC which showed considerable amounts of cholesterol esters, in addition to triglycerides, diglycerides and monoglycerides. The methanol phase, now devoid of non-polar lipids, was utilized to prepare TLC plates in order to separate and visualize the polar lipid fractions, in particular the sulphatides.