Skip to Content
Merck
  • Boric acid as a mobile phase additive for high performance liquid chromatography separation of ribose, arabinose and ribulose.

Boric acid as a mobile phase additive for high performance liquid chromatography separation of ribose, arabinose and ribulose.

Journal of chromatography. A (2005-10-29)
Cassandra De Muynck, Joeri Beauprez, Wim Soetaert, Erick J Vandamme
ABSTRACT

A new high performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) method is described for the analysis of ribose, arabinose and ribulose mixtures obtained from (bio)chemical isomerization processes. These processes gain importance since the molecules can be used for the synthesis of antiviral therapeutics. The HPLC method uses boric acid as a mobile phase additive to enhance the separation on an Aminex HPX-87K column. By complexing with boric acid, the carbohydrates become negatively charged, thus elute faster from the column by means of ion exlusion and are separated because the complexation capacity with boric acid differs from one carbohydrate to another. Excellent separation between ribose, ribulose and arabinose was achieved with concentrations between 0.1 and 10 gL(-1) of discrete sugar.

MATERIALS
Product Number
Brand
Product Description

Sigma-Aldrich
L-Ribulose, ≥90% (HPLC)
Sigma-Aldrich
D-Ribulose solution, ~1 M in H2O, ≥97.0% (HPLC)