Characterization of natural peptides from bovine tissue using capillary electrophoresis, high performance liquid chromatography, matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization, and Edman degradation.

A combination of high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and capillary electrophoresis (CE) spiking, Edman degradation, amino acid analysis and matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization mass spectrometry (MALDI-MS) was applied for the analysis of the primary structure of beta-thymosins. CE has been used to resolve peaks which coelute on HPLC, as well as to help establish the identity of tryptic fragments in the peptide mapping experiments of the two highly homologous beta-thymosins.