Electrolyte and additive effects on enantiomer separation of peptides by nonaqueous ion-pair capillary electrophoresis using tert.-butylcarbamoylquinine as chiral counterion.

Abstract

Nonaqueous ion-pair capillary electrophoresis separations of N-protected (all-R)/(all-S) alanine peptide enantiomers with up to six amino acid residues using tert.-butylcarbamoylquinine as selector and employing the partial filling technique are presented. The effects of various conditional parameters on separation were studied, namely chemical nature of the capillary wall, solvent composition of the background electrolyte (BGE), acid-base-ratio (equivalent to apparent pH), ionic strength and selector concentration. The influence of the solvent composition (methanol-ethanol ratios) on resolution turned out to be rather complex. The separation of the peptide enantiomers was strongly altered by small changes in pH and ionic strength. An increase of the selector concentration was found to offer an easy way for enhancing enantioselectivity, although some drawbacks, e.g., elongation of run times, have to be considered. A method was developed that allowed the separation of N-3,5-dinitrobenzoyl oligoalanine enantiomers containing 1-6 amino acid residues in one run. Like in a recent high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) study, separation selectivity thereby decreased from 1.541 (Ala), 1.340 (Ala(2)), 1.054 (Ala(3)), 1.029 (Ala(4)), 1.024 (Ala(5)) to 1.020 (Ala(6)). In addition, all four stereoisomers of N-2,4-dinitrophenyl- and N-3,5-dinitrobenzyloxycarbonyl-protected alanylalanine could be baseline-resolved.