A sensitive analytical method for the component monosaccharides of the polysaccharides from a Tibetan herb Potentilla anserine L. by capillary zone electrophoresis with UV detector

Abstract

A rapid and sensitive method was optimized and validated for the separation and quantification of derivatized monosaccharides in polysaccharide from Potentilla anserine L. using 1-naphthyl-3-methyl-5-pyrazolone (NMP) as precolumn derivatization reagent by capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE). On the basis of the optimum conditions, nine NMP-derivatized monosaccharides achieve baseline resolution within 16 min. The developed method has been successfully applied to analyze component monosaccharides of three Potentilla anserine L. samples, which were obtained by gradational precipitation with 50, 70, and 90% aqueous ethanol, respectively. The polysaccharide precipitated from 50% ethanol solvent was composed of fucose, mannose, xylose, glucuronic acid, glucose, rhamnose, galacturonic acid, galactose, arabinose in molar proportion of 1:1.65:1.99:5.08:7.38:8.14:13.05:27.41:39.02; the corresponding molar proportions for polysaccharide obtained from 70% ethanol solvent were 1:1.64:1.65:4.52:13.96:9.13:26.30:10.52:18.00; fucose and galacturonic acid were not found in the polysaccharide precipitated from 90% ethanol solvent, and mannose, xylose, glucuronic acid, glucose, rhamnose, galactose and arabinose were determined with molar proportion of 1:0.87:1.77:2.78:1.69:2.58:2.49. Quantitative recoveries of the component monosaccharides in the polysaccharide were in the range of 93.3–105.1% and the relative standard deviation (RSD) values fell within 3.4–6.3%, respectively. The results demonstrated that the proposed CZE method was precise and sensitive for the analysis of the composition of polysaccharide.