Natural amino-acids crystallisation

Because of their zwitterionic nature, amino acids are generally soluble in water. Their solubility in organic solvents rises as the fat-soluble portion of the molecule increases. The likeliest impurities are traces of salts, heavy metal ions, proteins and other amino acids. Purification of these is usually easy, by recrystallisation from water or ethanol/water mixtures. The amino acid is dissolved in the boiling solvent, decolorised if necessary by boiling with Ig of acid-washed charcoal/lOOg amino acid, then filtered hot, chilled, and set aside for several hours to crystallise. The crystals are filtered off, washed with ethanol, then ether, and dried. 

As the result of hydrolysis a complex mixture of all, or nearly all, the previously mentioned units is obtained. These have been isolated by various methods based upon the fractional crystallisation of the compounds themselves, or of their copper, silver and other salts. Only when one or more of the amino acids occurred in somewhat large amounts was their isolation and characterisation effected their amount seldom reached a value higher than 20 per cent, of the total quantity and the remainder was represented by uncrystallisable syrups of unknown nature. A great advance was made when Drechsel discovered that the protein molecule contained diamino acids as well as monoamino acids, and to Kossel and Kutscher we owe our chief knowledge concerning their isolation and estimation. Emil Fischer, in igoi, by his... 

The separation of the enantiomers of most amino acids can be ach ie ved by differential crystallisation of their JV-acetyl derivatives, such as that of leucine. Racemic A-acetyl leucine 88 is dissolved in the right solvent mix cooled and seeded with 4% by weight of natural (.S )-88. Pure (.S )-88 crystallises out in good yield.22... 

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