Liquid-liquid extraction and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry detection of curcuminoids from bacterial culture medium

J Chromatogr B Analyt Technol Biomed Life Sci. 2015 Apr 15:988:116-20. doi: 10.1016/j.jchromb.2015.02.024. Epub 2015 Feb 24.

Abstract

Liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) has been used to detect polyphenolic curcuminoids found in turmeric but studies of metabolism by bacterial and mammalian cells in vitro are compromised by poor recovery from the culture medium. We report a liquid-liquid extraction procedure with ethyl acetate and use LC-MS to quantify extracted curcuminoids. Ethyl acetate allows recoveries of ∼ 80-86% of curcuminoids from the bacterial growth medium, bacterial cell lysate and combined bacterial cell and growth medium matrices; a clear improvement over acetonitrile where recoveries were ∼ 25-66%. This optimised method will enable studies of curcuminoid metabolism and may be applicable to other hydrophobic polyphenolic compounds.

Keywords: Cell medium; Curcumin; Curcuminoids; Ethyl acetate; LC–MS; Recovery.

MeSH terms

  • Bioreactors / microbiology
  • Chromatography, Liquid / methods*
  • Curcumin / analysis
  • Curcumin / isolation & purification*
  • Curcumin / metabolism
  • Escherichia / metabolism*
  • Linear Models
  • Liquid-Liquid Extraction / methods*
  • Mass Spectrometry / methods*
  • Polyphenols / analysis
  • Polyphenols / isolation & purification*
  • Polyphenols / metabolism

Substances

  • Polyphenols
  • Curcumin