ABSTRACT
Thin-layer chromatography (TLC) as a powerful separation and analytic tool is used particularly in pharmaceutical preparations, foods, and natural products. The quantification of the separated vitamins can be performed by using modern densitometry. Because amounts of most hydrophilic vitamins are low in food and natural products, bioautography or derivatization is employed before densitometry. Each spot of various vitamins and related compounds separated by TLC is removed from the plates, reextracted, and assayed or further purified by HPLC. Various high-quality precoated silica gel, cellulose, or various reversed-phase plates are available for TLC. TLC has great advantages (simplicity, flexibility, speed, and relative inexpensiveness) for the separation and analysis of hydrophilic vitamins. In this chapter, we focus on the preparation of hydrophilic vitamins and related compounds from foods, mammalian tissues, pharmaceutical preparations, and biochemical reagents (including radioactive compounds) using TLC as a powerful separation tool; further details of analysis of hydrophilic vitamins have been reviewed elsewhere [1,2].
