ABSTRACT

Ion exchange techniques of amino acid analysis have dominated the scene for many years, but are now being increasingly challenged by HPLC methods. The precolumn derivatization of amino acids using o-phthalaldehyde and a thiol and the rapid separation of the derivatives using reversed-phase HPLC have proved to be a precise and accurate technique of amino acid determination. The preparation of the derivatives has been extensively studied in order to determine the optimum conditions for the reaction.