Amino acid analysis using derivatisation with 9-fluorenylmethyl chloroformate and reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography.

A simple procedure for the precolumn derivatisation of amino acids with 9-fluorenylmethyl chloroformate and a liquid chromatographic method for the separation of the derivatives with fluorimetric detection in the picomole range are reported. The procedure does not involve a solvent extraction and gives single, stable derivatives of the common protein amino acids. The method has been demonstrated on hydrolysates of proteins and peptides.