Simultaneous chromatographic separation of enantiomers, anomers and structural isomers of some biologically relevant monosaccharides.

A one-step chiral high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method was developed to separate anomers and enantiomers of some carbohydrates--glucose, fructose, arabinose, ribose, fucose, mannose, lyxose and xylose, using a Chiralpak AD-H column. The method allows the carbohydrate identification and determination of the absolute configuration (D or L) and simultaneously also determine the configuration of the anomeric center (alpha or beta) of the monosaccharide. The method was applied to matrices involved in food chain and human health, as part of a general strategy for the structure determination of their constituents, due to the extreme importance of sugars since they are involved in food authenticity and nutritional characteristics and the biological role depends on the enantiomer and the anomeric form of a given monosaccharide.