We routinely do fatty acid analyses of tissues. The attached paper outlines some work we did measuring total lipids in skeletal muscles after diet manipulations. We can also isolate certain lipids classes (phospholipids and triacylglycerols usually) and look at the fatty acids within these fractions.

If you have a biopsy, freeze dry it. Weigh the dried tissue. Mince it. Extract for two hr intervals with chloroform:methanol (C:M) 2:1 followed by C:M 1:1 followed by C:M, 1:2. Combine extracts and concentrate to dry. If you have this material in a preweighed tube you can weigh it again to get a lipid weight. This is a good approximation, but there is usually some non-lipid in the extract. You can get rid of some of this by redissolfing the lipid in 5 ml (more or less depending upon size of sample) of C:M, 2:1 and adding 1 ml water. Mix and centrifuge to separate phases. Discard the upper phase and dry the lower lipid-containing phase.

We measure the lipid content via a modified Bligh and Dyer (I personally like it better than Folch), however, we then quantify using enzymatic assays (total Cholesterol, TG, FFA, and PL). Definitely not as good as GC but it works well if your interested determining overall lipid classes, quickly and dirty.

In my lab we measure different lipids in skeletal muscle by LC/MS/MS or GS. We measure sphingolipids, acyl-carnitine, DAG, FFA by LC/MS/MS and TAG, phospholipids by GS. Attached, please find one of the methodological paper.

Good luck!!!

In my research, I measure the tissue (liver) Triglyceride (TAG) using autoanalyser konelab. Firstly, I extracted the lipid from the liver with chloroform/methanol, get the supernatant, dry it and re-dissolve with hexane. Thus add triton and analyses in the konelab. The same way when you want to analyze total cholesterol. My method is modified from these journal below. Good luck !

Villanueva, M., et al., Effect of high-fat diets supplemented with okara soybean by-product on lipid profiles of plasma, liver and faeces in Syrian hamsters. Food Chemistry, 2011. 124 p. 72-79.

Kudo, T., et al., Attenuating effect of clock mutation on tryglyceride contents in the ICR mouse liver under a high high-fat diet. J. Biol Rhythms, 2007. 22: p. 312-323.

In my lab we extract lipids from many matrices, including muscle, for analysis by means of HPLC, GC-mass, GC-FID, etc.. You can find the method of lipid extraction in the work that you enclose.

good luck!!!

I do not know who to study lipids in muscles directly. But maybe indirect studies could help you to answer your problem. I don’t know what kinds of lipids do you want to exam, but for example level of ganglioside GM3 is elevated in serum and in muscles [J. Inokuchi Proc. Jpn. Acad., 2011: 87 ( 4): 179-198. DOI: 10.2183/pjab.87.179]

Good luck

you can determine the lipid content with H1 MR spectroscopy.

you need biopsies and measure fatty acid oxidation. There are companies measuring lipid profiles from serum

With the volume, you can know if the weight is more protein/lipid composed. I don't know if exist a relationship table, but protein is more heavy than lipid.

I agree with some of the previous suggestions that proton MRI/MRS is a good, non-invasive method. You could also look into DEXA scanning which is routinely used to measure whole body fat and is cheaper and potentially quicker than MRS e.g. http://www.qcradiology.com/body_comp.html

Thanks for the input!