The Effect of Storage Temperature on the Metabolic Profiles Derived from Chicken Eggs

Abstract

Metabonomic profiling, using High Performance Liquid Chromatography Quadrupole Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry (HPLC-Q-ToF-MS), was adopted in this study to uncover differences in the small molecule profiles of egg yolks, between two sets of six eggs that were stored at 5°C and 23°C for five weeks. Choline, a compound that has previously been shown to have potential use as a biomarker of egg age, was observed to have a significantly lower abundance in the yolks of eggs that were stored at 5°C for five weeks compared to eggs stored at 23°C for the same length of time. A follow-up targeted study observed that the previously discovered trend of increasing choline concentration in egg yolk, with increasing egg age, is not repeatable when the eggs are stored at 5°C rather than 23°C. It concluded that, by refrigerating eggs at 5°C, the accurate prediction of egg age using choline as a biomarker can be prevented.

• Acceptance Date: Oct 3, 2019
• Publication Date: Mar 1, 2020
• Journal: Food Control
• Print ISSN: 0956-7135
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Pages: 106930 -106930
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodcont.2019.106930
• Keywords: Metabonomics, Chromatography, Mass spectrometry, Eggs, Fraud, Choline
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodcont.2019.106930