Abstract: A simple and effective method was developed to investigate triacylglyceride (TAG) compounds in biological matrices using silver ion high performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (Ag+-HPLC-MS). The TAG compounds from mouse serum were extracted by a modified Folch method using the classical CHCl3-MeOH solvent system. The extract was separated on a Varian ChromSpher 5 Lipids column with isocratic elution using acetonitrile-hexane (1:99, v/v) as mobile phase at a flow rate of 0.75 mL/min, and detected by a mass spectrometer equipped with an atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI) source in positive ion mode to acquire sufficient MS information of TAG compounds by enhanced mass spectrometry (EMS), enhanced product ion (EPI) and neutral loss (NL) scans. The identification of TAG compounds was based on their chromatographic behaviors and MS data. Besides, the NL scans of thirty fatty acids were performed to further validate the results. Finally, 66 TAG compounds as well as 5 cholesteryl ether (CE) compounds were obtained from the mouse serum extract. This method is simple, reproducible and also suitable for the analysis of TAG compounds in other samples.

Key words: atmospheric pressure chemical ionization mass spectrometry (APCI-MS), serum, triacylglyceride compounds, silver ion high performance liquid chromatography (Ag+-HPLC)