ABSTRACT
Phospholipid is a general term that includes all lipids containing phosphorus. However, it is a term often mistakenly equated with phosphoglycerides, the most common of the phospholipids (Tocher et al., 2008). Although a large variety of phospholipid (PL) structures in nature have been found, they generally contain a glycerol or a sphingosyl backbone (Gunstone et al., 1994; Silvius, 1995; Vance and Vance, 2002; Guo et al., 2005a). PLs are classied into four main classes: glycerophospholipids, sphingolipids, ether phospholipids, and phonophospholipids, depending on their backbones and bonding types (Hawthorne and Ansell, 1982).
