Abstract: A high performance liquid chromatography coupled with evaporative light-scattering detection (HPLC-ELSD) method for analyzing cerebroside content in aquatic products was developed. The separation was performed on a TSKgel CN-80Ts column by using hexane-2-propanol and dichloromethane-methanol as the mobile phase at a flow rate of 1.0 mL/min. The temperature of drift tube was kept at 50 ℃ and the flow rate of nitrogen was 2.4 L/min. The aquatic products sea cucumber, sea urchin, sea starfish, fish liver and fish brain were selected as experimental subjects. Under optimal conditions, effective separation of cerebrosides was completed within 14 min. The linear range of the established cerebrosides calibration curve was 0.05－5μg, and the limit of detection was 0.01μg with a regression correlation coefficient of 0.99. The average recovery rate for cerebrosides in sea cucumber across three spike levels was 94.28% with a relative standard deviation of 4.90%. An excellent stability of this method was observed. In these aquatic products, the content of cerebrosides in sea starfish was the highest, which was up to 11.21 mg/g; in contrast, sea cucumber had the lowest content of cerebrosides, which was 0.35 mg/g. These results demonstrate that the proposed method is feasible, rapid, simple and accurate. Meanwhile, aquatic products such as sea cucumber can be used as a potential source of functional sphingolipids.

Key words: high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), evaporative light-scattering detection (ELSD), cerebrosides, aquatic products, sea cucumber