Purification, general amino acids

In the food, medical, and pharmaceutical industries, amino acids, peptides, and proteins play very important roles. Their purities must be high because of using for human body. For separation and purification of amino acids, peptides, and proteins, adsorption and ion exchange processes are generally used in these industries. 

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. 

Amino acids have high melting or decomposition points and are best examined for purity by paper or thin layer chromatography. The spots are developed with ninhydrin. Customary methods for the purification of small quantities of amino acids obtained from natural sources (i.e. l-5g) are ion-exchange chromatography (see Chapter 1). For general treatment of amino acids see Greenstein and Winitz [The Amino Acids, Vols 1-3, J.Wiley Sons, New York 1961] and individual amino acids in Chapters 4 and 6. 

Polypeptides. These are a string of a-amino acids usually with the natural 5(L) [L-cysteine is an exception and has the R absolute configuration] or sometimes "unnatural" 7f(D) configuration at the a-carbon atom. They generally have less than -100 amino acid residues. They can be naturally occurring or, because of their small size, can be synthesised chemically from the desired amino acids. Their properties can be very similar to those of small proteins. Many are commercially available, can be custom made commercially or locally with a peptide synthesiser. They are purified by HPLC and can be used without further purification. Their purity can be checked as described under proteins. 

Kramer JR, Deming TJ (2010) General method for purification of alpha-amino acid-N-carboxyanhydrides using flash chromatography. Biomacromolecules 11 3668-3672... 

FIGURE 1.35 SLM process using O-9-(l-adamantylcarbamoyl)-10,ll-dihydro-ll-octadecylsulfinylquinme and corresponding quinidine derivative as chiral carriers for the preparative separation of enantiomers of Al-derivatized amino acids (e.g., DNB-Leu). (a) ftinciple of the carrier SLM process with carrier-mediated transport (top) and (nonstereoselective) nonspecific transport processes (bottom), (b) General experimental setup of the SLM production unit with two membrane modules, (c) Multistage SLM purification process. P, permeate QD/QN, membrane modnles snpported with quinidine-derived and quinine-derived chiral carriers. R, S, D, L refers to the respective enantiomers of the selectand (DNB-Leu). (Reproduced from A. Maximini et al., J. Membr. ScL, 276 221 (2006). With permission.)... 

In general, solid-phase synthesis, rather than solution-phase synthesis, can be the preferred method for the generation of combinatorial libraries because of the greater abihty to automate a solid-phase protocol, primarily due to the use of excess reagents in solution to effect cleaner reactions and to the ease of workup by simple filtration. The solid-phase method of peptide synthesis has had many notable successes. However, the preparation of peptides containing more than 20 amino acids in length using the solid-phase technique often causes major problems in that very extensive purification of the final product is needed. 

Colistin (COL) is a multicomponent antibiotic (polymyxins E) that is produced by strains of inverse Bacillus polymyxa. It consists of a mixture of several closely related decapeptides with a general structure composed of a cyclic heptapeptide moiety and a side chain acetylated at the N-terminus by a fatty acid. Up to 13 different components have been identified. The two main components of colistin are polymyxins El and E2 they include the same amino acids but a different fatty acid (216). A selective and sensitive HPLC method was developed for the determination of COL residues in milk and four bovine tissues (muscle, liver, kidney, and fat). The sample pretreatment consists of protein precipitation with trichloracetic acid (TCA), solid-phase purification on Cl 8 SPE cartridges, and precolumn derivatization of colistin with o-phthalaldehyde and 2-mercaptoethanol in borate buffer (pH 10.5). The last step was performed automatically, and the resulting reaction mixture was injected into a switching HPLC system including a precolumn and the reversed-phase analytical column. Fluorescence detection was used. The structural study of El and E2 derivatives was carried out by HPLC coupled with an electrospray MS. Recoveries from the preseparation procedure were higher than 60%. 

Comparative assessments of purification protocols are generally difficult, and wide ranges of activities have been reported. ACV synthetases have been assayed by either employing a peptide adsorption resin (Porapak) [29,48] or high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) detection of the derivatized tripeptide [26,27], The adsorption assay, employing radiolabeled amino acids, has been... 

Purification of T from retinal rod outer segments and of G0 from brain, provided yields of these proteins that were sufficient for partial amino acid sequence analysis of their proteolytic fragments. This analysis revealed that a subunits of G proteins, while quite distinct from each other in general terms, are nevertheless similar. A partial sequence of 21 amino acids was determined to be common in bovine rod cell T and bovine brain G0 [168], On the basis of this sequence, and other amino acid sequence analysis, four laboratories cloned cDNAs coding for transducin. The deduced amino acid structure of three of the cDNAs is the same [169-171] the fourth differed [172]. Peptide-directed antibodies designed to distinguish between the two cloned forms localized one to rod cells (T-r) and the other to cone cells (T-c) [173],... 

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