Abstract

AbstractDetection of amino acids is utmost important for the evaluation of protein structure and also for the determination of the C-terminal units of degraded proteins. Thin layer chromatography (TLC) is an important tool for the identification of amino acids by various spray reagents. A new spray reagent, 2-hydroxy-1-naphthaldehyde has been introduced for the detection of amino acids, which is capable of developing several distinguishable colors with high sensitivity (0.06–2.0 μg) on TLC plates. Various distinguishable colors are also formed with this reagent in combination with ninhydrin with very high sensitivity (0.02–0.80 μg). Color chromatograms are also recorded by digital camera.