Organic solvent systems for 31P nuclear magnetic resonance analysis of lecithin phospholipids: applications to two-dimensional gradient-enhanced 1H-detected heteronuclear multiple quantum coherence experiments.

31P NMR of lipid extracts is a reproducible, rapid, and nondegradative method for qualitative and quantitative analyses of phospholipid mixtures. This analysis, however, is hampered by the instability of the solvent system commonly used for NMR spectroscopy (CHCl3/ CH3OH/H2O-EDTA). In this work we have investigated the effects of several monophasic solvent mixtures to overcome this disadvantage. Among these mixtures we have selected a solution of triethylamine, dimethylformamide, and guanidinium chloride (Et3N/DMF-GH+) as the most efficient system. In this solvent the chemical shift dispersion of the 31P signals is about four times the frequency range observed in the standard chloroform-methanol-water system. Moreover, the stability of this solvent, as a monophasic system, allows easy reproducibility of the analysis. The use of two-dimensional 1H-31P gradient-enhanced heteronuclear multiple quantum coherence experiments can further exploit the higher resolution of the signals obtained with this solvent system for the structure elucidation of known and unidentified phospholipids.