Reaction of Amino Acid Esters and Amides with o-Phthalaldehyde. Limitations in Fluorescent Yield

Abstract

Amino acid esters and amides fail to produce strong fluorescence following their reaction with o-phthalaldehyde (OPA) in the presence of β-mercaptoethanol. The lack of luminescence appears to arise from a quenching phenomenon rather than from reduced reactivity of these substrates toward OPA. The amido hydrogen in the peptide linkage has been implicated in the loss in fluorescence yield.

o-Phthalaldehyde (OPA) has proven to be a very useful reagent for converting amino acids to fluorescent isoindole derivatives¹. This derivatization process permits the visualization of femtomolar quantities of amino acids. Unfortunately, this technique has not been applied successfully to the derivatization of peptides^2,3, except for those containing lysine residues, in which the terminal amino group is attacked by the reagent⁴. It is the purpose of this note to more clearly define the limitations of OPA as a fluorogenic reagents for peptides and amino acid esters.