I have only found references to the phase transition temperature of Soy lecithin which is 40 – 50°C.Meanwhile, egg lecithin has a phase transition temperature of -5C. Therefore, I am not confident in assuming that sunflower lecithin has the same phase transition temperature as soy lecithin.
Ultimately, I would like to create liposomes using the thin film hydration method with the available sunflower lecithin in my lab.
Thanks in advance
Dear Belal Chami ,
One of the issues you encountered is presumably the fact that lecithin is having multiple meanings. In a pure biochemical definition it means phosphatidylcholine, in food science it (often) means a mixture of glycerol-phospholipids including phosphatidylcholine, phosphatidylethanolamine, phosphatidylinositol, phosphatidylserine, and phosphatidic acid while the commercial lecithin is a mixture of phospholipids in oil.
Still if talking about the ‘same’ lecithin comparisons have been made between soy and sunflower lecithin:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Yulia_Monakhova/publication/284563272_Quantitative_Analysis_of_Sunflower_Lecithin_Adulteration_with_Soy_Species_by_NMR_Spectroscopy_and_PLS_Regression/links/565b2cbb08ae1ef92980e62d/Quantitative-Analysis-of-Sunflower-Lecithin-Adulteration-with-Soy-Species-by-NMR-Spectroscopy-and-PLS-Regression.pdf
and perhaps more interesting:
Penci, M. C., Constenla, D. T., & Carelli, A. A. (2010). Free-fatty acid profile obtained by enzymatic solvent-free hydrolysis of sunflower and soybean lecithins. Food chemistry, 120(1), 332-338.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/38161233/FOCH9011.pdf?response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DFree-fatty_acid_profile_obtained_by_enzy.pdf&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A%2F20191021%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20191021T154042Z&X-Amz-Expires=3600&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Signature=22c782ca2e6c8d2ebe8951a5c631460c3fe5a504ab8734a8e8d6a9729839ef73
here you can see that the fatty acid profile for both are pretty much the same. So indeed no (substantial) difference in phase transition temperature is expected.
Best regards.
The composition of lecithin varies enormously depending upon the source of lecithin and the degree of purification. For example, egg lecithin contains 69% phosphatidylcholine (PC) and 24% phosphatidylethanolamine (PEA), while soybean lecithin contains 21% phosphatidylcholine (PC), 22% phosphatidylethanolamine (PEA), and 19% phosphatidylinositol (PL), along with other components.
Hi,
As Rob Keller and Ahmed Agiba correctly mentioned, lecithin is a combination of different phospholipid molecules in different ratios. You need to check the ingredient list / Product specification.
Attached, I am putting a Table from below manuscript in which Phase Transition Temperature of a number of different phospholipids are listed.
From:
M. Danaei, M. Kalantari, M. Raji, H. Samareh Fekri, R. Saber, G. P. Asnani, S. M. Mortazavi, M. R. Mozafari, B. Rasti, A. Taheriazam. Probing nanoliposomes using single particle analytical techniques: effect of excipients, solvents, phase transition and zeta potential. Heliyon 4 (2018) e01088.
Thanks for the responses. I would check with the manufacturer for the more abundant phospholipid moleculeIn the sunflower Lecithin preparation and choose that respective phase transition temperature. This has been very helpful.
Natural phospholipids have a range of phospholipid species most of which contain unsaturated fatty acids as part of their hydrocarbon chains. Both sunflower and soy lecithin containing PC from 45-90% from Lipoid are all going to contain many phospholipids with phase transition temps very low meaning they are liquid state at room temp.
However, there are some stearic acid and palmitic acid fattys acids in about 20% of the total amount. So you could argue that to cover those saturated PLs you would heat the lipids above their transition temp for eg DPPC and DSPC which would be present in small amount, etc but the highly unsaturated PLs such as POPC and PLPC may oxidise at temps above 50c so room temp is probably a safe bet when using unsaturated PLs.
You can actually average the phase transition temp of lecithins by using all the fatty acid composition in the entire mix. But you would need the data sheet from manufacturer.
Belal Chami
This is a property that should be measured and not attempted to be looked up in literature. Can be done easily with a polarized microscope with a heating accessory. If push comes to shove it could probably be measured by sacrificing a pair of sunglasses and a heating block with thermometer. Many melting point apparatus contain a polarizer too.
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