In the area of biomolecular separations, capillary electrophoresis (CE) is advantageous in terms of analysis speed, peak efficiency and small sample size requirements. In order to more fully assess the capabilities and limitations of this bio-analytical technique, CE was applied to a clinical, to a biological and to a practical research problem. In the area of clinical analyses, CE was used to determine qualitatively and quantitatively oxalate in various parenteral nutrition solutions. It was hypothesized that parenteral nutrition solutions act as direct sources of oxalate introduction into premature infants. The formation of oxalate stones in the renal glands of premature infants is becoming an increasing apparent clinical problem. A coelectroosmotic CE analytical method based on indirect UV detection was developed that could reliably measure oxalate at part-per-million (ppm) levels in commercial parenteral nutrition solutions. The results from the oxalate determinations indicated that the infusion of parenteral nutrition solutions into premature infants places a clinically significant and unnecessary oxalate burden on the infants. The CE characterization of biosynthetic membrane protein samples is a formidable analytical task. This is mainly due to the fact that intrinsic membrane proteins are extremely hydrophobic, and thus, difficultly soluble in the common aqueous based CE run buffers. In this biologically oriented separation problem, a counterelectroosmotic CE method (CZE) was developed to characterize samples of the transmembrane serine receptor protein. Qualitative electrophoretic profiles of the protein samples were made possible by the inclusion of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) in the run buffer. The utility of CE as a basic analytical technique was applied to the separation and determination of short-chain dicarboxylic acids (succinic, glutaric and adipic acids) in saturated aqueous solutions. In order to gather basic aqueous solubility data for a homologous series of dicarboxylic acids, a practical separation of succinic, glutaric and adipic acids was developed and optimized. The detection of the dicarboxylic acids was based on indirect UV absorbance. The solubility determinations for the dicarboxylic acids showed close agreement with the reported literature values.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UMASS/oai:scholarworks.umass.edu:dissertations-7631 |
| Date | 01 January 1996 |
| Creators | Nelson, Bryant Christopher |
| Publisher | ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst |
| Source Sets | University of Massachusetts, Amherst |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest |
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