Structural analyses of triglycerides containing isotopically-labelled fatty acids

The stereospecific analysis of triglycerides is a complex, multistep procedure and some losses inevitably occur at every stage. Such losses are particularly important when the triglycerides contain isotopically-labelled fatty acids incorporated by incubation in vitro with the relevant enzyme systems, but they can be compensated for by adding, prior to the analysis, a triglyceride containing only the same labelled odd-chain fatty acid in each position.