Separation and detection limit of chiral amino acids in multiple components by analytical techniques

Abstract

The separation of hydrolyzed chiral amino acids in multiple components, such as high-molecular-weight interstellar type complex organics, was verified to compare with meteoritic amino acids. Reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) gave±0.34% (n = 7) regarding the standard deviation(σ) of enantiomeric excesses (%D-%L) of D, L-alanine in a hydrolyzed fraction of complex organics. The chiral separation of D, L-alanine by the RP-HPLC method might be more convenient than gas chromatograph combined with the mass spectrometry (GC/MS) method in asymmetric synthesis verification. Possible pathways for the asymmetric synthesis of amino acid precursors (not asymmetric photolysis of monomer amino acids) were considered in terms of the detection limit of statistically significant enantiomeric excesses.