A New High Performance Chromatographic Method for Polyamine Analysis in Picea Needles,Without Previous Extract Purification

Abstract

A fully automated, fast and sensitive method for the separation of 19 interrelated amino compounds is presented.

With the help of a high performance amino-acid analyser, ion-exchange chromatography was used to separate ornithine, lysine and arginine from its decarboxylated products: putrescine, cadaverine and agmatine. Also included are ammonia, ethanolamine, histamine, aminopropane, diaminopropane, acetyl and carbamyl putrescine as well as most of the known polyamines, i.e.: nor-spermidine, spermidine, homospermidine, thermine, spermine and 1,7-diaminoheptane which serves as internal standard for the quantification. The method uses 2 buffers, 1 single temperature and fluorimetric detection. It takes 72 minutes and is of picomole sensitive level. This method is well suited for the analysis of crude samples without preliminary purification, thus saving time and reducing preparative losses.

The reproducibility of the method and its application for the analyses of samples from different biological sources, such as microorganisms, plant and animal material has been tested in our laboratory for more than one year with excellent results. This method could serve as a powerful tool for the analysis of these amino compounds in which there is currently considerable interest.

Preliminary results concerning compared studies of healthy and injured needles of air polluted Picea are discussed.