Separation of peptides by capillary electrophoresis

Abstract

Peptides are an important class of analytes in chemistry, biochemistry, food chemistry, as well as medical and pharmaceutical sciences including biomarker analysis in peptidomics and proteomics. As a high- resolution technique, capillary electrophoresis (CE) is well suited for the analysis of polar compounds such as peptides. In addition, CE is orthogonal to high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) as both techniques are based on different physicochemical separation principles. For the successful development of peptide separations by CE, operational parameters including puffer pH, buffer concentration and buffer type, applied voltage, capillary dimensions, as well as background electrolyte additives such as detergents, ion-pairing reagents, cyclodextrins, (poly)amines, and soluble polymers have to be considered and optimized.