Detection of Porphyrins in Hair Using Capillary Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry

Unlike humans, some animals have evolved a physiological ability to deposit porphyrins, which are pigments produced during heme synthesis in cells, in the skin and associated integument such as hair. Given the inert nature and easiness of collection of hair, animals that present porphyrin-based pigm...

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Detalhes bibliográficos
Autores: Louleb, Marwa, Galván, Ismael, Latrous, Latifa, Justyn, Nicholas M., Hill, Geoffrey E., Ríos, Ángel, Zougagh, Mohammed
Formato: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2022
País:España
Recursos:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repositorio:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:digital.csic.es:10261/273085
Acesso em linha:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/273085
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palavra-chave:Animal pigmentation
Fluorescence
Hair
Mammals
Natural porphyrins
CLC-MS
Flying squirrels
Descrição
Resumo:Unlike humans, some animals have evolved a physiological ability to deposit porphyrins, which are pigments produced during heme synthesis in cells, in the skin and associated integument such as hair. Given the inert nature and easiness of collection of hair, animals that present porphyrin-based pigmentation constitute unique models for porphyrin analysis in biological samples. Here we present the development of a simple, rapid, and efficient analytical method for four natural porphyrins (uroporphyrin I, coproporphyrin I, coproporphyrin III and protoporphyrin IX) in the Southern flying squirrel Glaucomys volans, a mammal with hair that fluoresces and that we suspected has porphyrin-based pigmentation. The method is based on capillary liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (CLC-MS), after an extraction procedure with formic acid and acetonitrile. The resulting limits of detection (LOD) and quantification (LOQ) were 0.006–0.199 and 0.021–0.665 μg mL−1, respectively. This approach enabled us to quantify porphyrins in flying squirrel hairs at concentrations of 3.6–353.2 μg g−1 with 86.4–98.6% extraction yields. This method provides higher simplicity, precision, selectivity, and sensitivity than other methods used to date, presenting the potential to become the standard technique for porphyrin analysis.