Date of Award
1-7-2013
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Chemistry, MS
First Advisor
Brett Savary
Committee Members
Richard Warby; Thomas Risch
Call Number
LD 251.A566t 2012 P33
Abstract
Lipids secreted from sebaceous glands in bat integument may play a role in determining host pathogenicity by the fungus Geomyces destructans in White-Nose Syndrome (WNS). To investigate this, I have developed analytical methods to determine the triacylglycerol (TAG) profiles for three bat species: Eastern red bats (Lasiurus borealis, Müller, 1776), evening bats (Nycticeius humeralis, Rafinesque, 1818), and big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus, Beauvois, 1796). Neutral lipids extracted from the hair and wing tissue were fractionated by preparative thin-layer chromatography (TLC) into four major lipid bands corresponding to cholesterol, free fatty acids (FFAs), TAGs, and sterol/wax esters. Densitometry showed higher proportions of TAGs in hair than from wing tissue in all four species. TAG bands were recovered and analyzed by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS). Mass spectra showed sodiated TAG ion species with variable fatty acyl (FA) moieties range from m/z 715.6-911.8. High intensity ion peaks were consistent with 16:0 and 18:1 as dominant FA moieties, and these were identified as palmitic and oleic acids, respectively, by liquid chromatography electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry. I determined significant differences in TAG profiles between three bat species by MALDI-TOF MS, which may be species-specific, and provide the first description of integumentary lipids in bats. In this study, I performed the first TAG profiling of bats, which may be species-specific in bats. Thus from this study I provide a new tool to further investigate the role of integumentary lipids during host-pathogen interactions in WNS. Also, these results provide baseline data of lipid substrates that should be further investigated to determine possible roles in the host-pathogen interaction of G. destructans and bats.
Rights Management
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Pannkuk, Evan Lacy, "Triacylglyceride Profiles of Integumentary Lipids Isolated from Three Bat Species Determined By Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption/Ionization Time-Of-Flight Mass Spectrometry" (2013). Student Theses and Dissertations. 833.
https://arch.astate.edu/all-etd/833
