Novel spray reagent for the identification of amino acids on thin-layer chromatography plates

Abstract

The detection or identification of amino acids is extremely important for the evaluation of protein structure and also because of their presence in numerous natural products. A new spray reagent, dichlorodicyanobenzoquinone, can produce various distinguishable colours with amino acids. The detection limits for amino acids with this spray reagent ranges between 0.1 and 1.0 µg under cold conditions and also after heating.