Wax ester analysis

Wax esters are highly hydrophobic neutral lipids that are major constituents of the cutin and suberin layer. Moreover they have favorable properties as a commodity for industrial applications.
We developed a fast profiling method for wax ester analysis on the molecular species level. The direct infusion ESI-tandem MS method allows the semi-quantitative determination of wax ester compositions from complex lipid mixtures covering about 700 even chain molecular species. The definition of calibration prototype groups that combine wax esters according to their fragmentation behavior enables fast quantitative analysis by applying multiple reaction monitoring.

Workflow of wax ester profiling by nano-ESI-MS/MS

adapted from Iven et al. Plant Methods 2013, 9:24