Qualitative Analysis of the Free Amino Acids in Dormant and Germinating Seeds of Ariki Ryegrass by Thin-Layer Electrophoresis and Chromatography

Abstract

Analysis of proteins, peptides and amino acids has long been an important field of biochemical research, but has progressed particularly rapidly since the 1930s; for it was at about this time that chromatography, after some thirty years of obscurity, became widely recognised as a major breakthrough in the separation of complex mixtures into their pure components. Paper chromatography, developed by Martin and Synge in 1941, and Consden, Gordon and Martin in 1944, was welcomed as a straightforward, rapid and sensitive technique that did not require much equipment. The chromatographic separation is not so much by adsorption*, but rather, by partition*, although both phenomena are involved, and is particularly suited to polar substances such as amino acids.