Journal article

Publication year: 2016

Pages: 1565-1574

Journal: Journal of The American Society for Mass Spectrometry

Volume number: 27

Issue number: 9

ISSN: 1044-0305

DOI Link: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13361-016-1429-6

Publisher: American Chemical Society

Abstract: 
GC-MS investigations were carried out to elucidate the aging behavior of unsaturated fatty acids in fingerprint residues and to identify their degradation products in aged samples. For this purpose, a new sample preparation technique for fingerprint residues was developed that allows producing N-methyl-N-trimethylsilyl-trifluoroacetamide (MSTFA) derivatives of the analyzed unsaturated fatty acids and their degradation products. MSTFA derivatization catalyzed by iodotrimethylsilane enables the reliable identification of aldehydes and oxoacids as characteristic MSTFA derivatives in GCMS. The obtained results elucidate the degradation pathway of unsaturated fatty acids. Our study of aged fingerprint residues reveals that decanal is the main degradation product of the observed unsaturated fatty acids. Furthermore, oxoacids with different chain lengths are detected as specific degradation products of the unsaturated fatty acids. The detection of the degradation products and their chain length is a simple and effective method to determine the double bond position in unsaturated compounds. We can show that the hexadecenoic and octadecenoic acids found in fingerprint residues are not the pervasive fatty acids Delta 9-hexadecenoic (palmitoleic acid) and Delta 9-octadecenoic (oleic acid) acid but Delta 6-hexadecenoic acid (sapienic acid) and Delta 8-octadecenoic acid. The present study focuses on the structure identification of human sebum-specific unsaturated fatty acids in fingerprint residues based on the identification of their degradation products. These results are discussed for further investigations and method developments for age determination of fingerprints, which is still a tremendous challenge because of several factors affecting the aging behavior of individual compounds in fingerprints.

Harvard Citation style: Pleik, S., Spengler, B., Schäfer, T., Urbach, D., Luhn, S. and Kirsch, D. (2016) Fatty Acid Structure and Degradation Analysis in Fingerprint Residues, Journal of The American Society for Mass Spectrometry, 27(9), pp. 1565-1574. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13361-016-1429-6

APA Citation style: Pleik, S., Spengler, B., Schäfer, T., Urbach, D., Luhn, S., & Kirsch, D. (2016). Fatty Acid Structure and Degradation Analysis in Fingerprint Residues. Journal of The American Society for Mass Spectrometry. 27(9), 1565-1574. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13361-016-1429-6