High-speed analysis of dansyl derivatives of polyamines

Summary Analytical conditions for the high-speed, reversed-phase, liquid chromatographic of a diamine (putrescine) and polyamines (spermine and spermidine) were determined. Various elution modes were employed using the same mobile phase constituents: 20mM sodium heptane sulfonate and 20mM acetic acid as solvent A and, pure acetonitrile as solvent B. Samples were derivatized with dansyl chloride before injection.Under isocratic conditions, the separation of the three polyamines was achieved in 7 min. The use of a linear elution gradient led to the same analytical time but with a better resolution of the putrescine peak from non-polyamine frontal peaks. For these measurements, the sample size was 5l. This volume was increased to 20l and the use of a steep gradient combined with the peak-compression technique allowed a fast analysis in 2–3 minutes, which may be compared with a 30 min run time necessary when a conventional column is used.