title: Determination of agmatine in biological samples by capillary electrophoresis with chemiluminescence detection.
abstract: A fast and simple method based on capillary electrophoresis (CE) with chemiluminescence (CL) detection has been developed for the determination of agmatine, a recently identified neurotransmitter/modulator. The CE run time was approximately 2 min for each sample injected. CL detection employed a lab-built reaction flow cell and a photon counter. The CL reagents used were luminol and NaBrO. The optimized conditions for the CL detection were 5 x 10(-4)M luminol added to the CE running buffer and 5.0 x 10(-4)M NaBrO in 100 mM NaCO3-NaOH buffer solution at pH 12.5 introduced post column. Detection limit for agmatine was 4.3 x 10(-6)M (S/N=3). The precision (R.S.D.) on peak height (at 1 x 10(-5)M agmatine) and migration time were 3.7 and 2.5%, respectively. The present CE-CL method was evaluated with the determination of agmatine in tissue samples taken from rat brain, and rat and monkey stomachs. Samples were directly injected into the CE-CL system after the removal of proteins. A higher level of agmatine was detected in the stomach samples. Agmatine concentrations in the tissue samples taken from rat and monkey stomachs were similar at approximately 1950 ng/g wet tissue.
authors.affiliation: College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Guangxi Normal University, Guilin 51004, China.
authors.forename: Shulin
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.forename: Chao
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Xie
authors.forename: Xin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.forename: Yi-Ming
authors.initials: YM
authors.lastname: Liu
mesh_terms: D000376:Agmatine / Q000032:analysis*; D000818:Animals; D001921:Brain / Q000378:metabolism; D019075:Electrophoresis, Capillary / Q000379:methods*; D000882:Haplorhini; D008163:Luminescent Measurements; D051381:Rats; D013270:Stomach / Q000737:chemistry
chemical_list: D000376:Agmatine