Chiral analysis of aliphatic short chain organic acids by capillary electrophoresis.

Abstract

Short chain organic acids play an important role in different areas such as biochemistry, clinical chemistry, or the food industry. The enantiomeric ratio of chiral metabolites is an important parameter for the understanding of metabolic processes and in many cases it can serve diagnostic purposes. On the other hand, the presence of racemates in food products could indicate the use of organic acids as additives; this is not always permitted and needs to be controlled. The short chain of these acids makes difficult the three point interaction generally accepted as necessary for chiral recognition. Relatively recent publications have demonstrated the feasibility of their direct chiral separation in capillary electrophoresis by various techniques utilizing exchange capillary electrophoresis, macrocyclic antibiotics, cyclodextrins, ion-pair method, and transition metal complexes. The present article describes existing methods and strategies proposed to advance these areas.