Recent advances in lipid analysis by capillary electromigration methods, 2019-2024

Following a long period during which Capillary Electrophoresis (CE) was little used for lipid analysis (see Poinsot et al., Electrophoresis, 40, 2019, 190-211), the last five years have seen an increase in publications on this subject. Micellar Electrokinetic Chromatography (MEKC) can now compete with Gas Chromatography (GC) for the analysis of fatty acids, while non-aqueous capillary electrophoresis (NACE) now allows the study of fatty acids as well as phospholipids or glycolipids. As NACE also allows easy coupling to Mass Spectrometry (MS) in both positive and negative Electrospray Ionization (ESI), the technique has now become sufficiently robust, and for laboratories equipped with GC or Liquid Chromatography (LC) to consider using CE, particularly as it presents the advantage of much faster sample preparation than with GC for fatty acids and a resolution identical to LC for phospholipids and glycolipids. In this article, we will therefore describe the advances made in this area over the last five years.