High-speed assay of amino acids using reversed-phase liquid chromatography

A procedure is described by which 20 commonly occurring amino acids may be separated by reversed-phase liquid chromatography at room temperature in a total time, including derivatisation with o-phthalaldehyde/2-mercaptoethanol reagent, of approximately 15 minutes. Further, an increase in column temperature enables increased resolution of certain amino acids to be obtained with small but acceptable losses in fluorescence intensity. The only major drawback to the method is that the derivatisation reagent does not react with proline or hydroxyproline.