Analysis of Chiral Amino Acids within Fermented Beverages Utilizing a Column Switching System

Introduction

With the exception of glycine, the 20 types of amino acids that make up proteins occur as D and L optical isomers. In recent years, it has been found that D- amino acids are contained in various foods such as fruits and vegetables, although much less abundant than L-amino acids. Particularly, it is known that fermented foods contain a number of D-amino acids. The D-amino acids contained in foods have various effects. D-alanine, D-leucine, and D-phenylalanine are known to taste sweeter than their L-amino acid counterparts. For this reason, the amount of D-amino acids contained in a fermented food is considered to affect the taste of the food, and high sensitivity and highly selective analysis methods for D-amino acids in fermented foods are gaining attention. This article introduces an example analysis of fermented beverages using a column switching system (introduced in Application News No. C149) which alternates between two types of chiral columns using high-pressure column switching valves (FCV).

July 3, 2017 GMT