Abstract
There is no single hydrolysis method that will effectively cleave all proteins to single amino acids completely and quantitatively. This is owing to the varying stability of the peptide bonds between the different amino acids and the amino acid side chains, which are themselves susceptible to the reagents and conditions used to cleave the peptide bonds (see Table 1). The classical hydrolysis conditions, to which all other methods are compared, is liquid-phase hydrolysis in which the protein or peptide sample is heated in 6 M hydrochloric acid under vacuum at 110°C for 18-24 h (1). The various methods of hydrolysis described here are summarized in Table 2.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Moore, S. and Stein, W. H. (1963) Chromatographic determination of amino acids by the use of automatic recording equipment. Methods Enzymol. 6, 819–831.
Wilm, M., Shevchenko, A., Houthaeve, T., Brit, S., Schweigerer, L., Fotsis, T., and Mann, M. (1996) Femtomole sequencing of proteins from polyacrylamide gels by nano-electrospray mass spectrometer. Nature 379, 466–469.
Hunt, S. (1985) Degradation of amino acids accompanying in vitro protein hydrolysis, in Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Amino Acids (Barrett, G. C., ed.) Chapman and Hall, London, pp. 376–398.
Bidlingmeyer, B. A., Tarvin, T. L., and Cohen, S. A. (1986) Amino acid analysis of submicrogram hydrolysate samples, in Methods in Protein Sequence Analysis (Walsh, K., ed.) Humana Press, Totowa, NJ, pp. 229–244.
Dupont, D., Keim, P., Chui, A., Bozzini, M. L., and Wilson, K. J. (1988) Gas-phase hydrolysis for PTC-amino acids. Appl. Biosys. User Bull. 2, 1–10.
Matsubara, H. and Sasaki, R. M. (1969) High recovery of tryptophan from acid hydrolysis of proteins. Biochem. Biophys. Res. Commun. 35, 175–181.
Carne, A.F. Chemical Modifications of Proteins, Methods in Molecular Biology, Basic Protein and Peptide Protocols, vol. 32 (Walker, J. M., ed.) Humana Press, Totowa, NJ, pp. 311–320.
Hugli, T. E. and Moore, S. (1972) Determination of the tryptophan content of proteins by ion exchange chromatography of alkaline hydrolysis. J. Biol. Chem. 247(9), 2828–2834.
Simpson, R. J., Neuberger, M. R., and Lui, T.-Y. (1976) Complete amino acid analysis of proteins from a single hydrolysate. J. Biol. Chem. 251, 1936–1940.
Strydom, D. J., Anderson, T. T., Apostal, I., Fox, W. J., Paxton, R. J., and Crabb, J. W. (1993) Cysteine and tryptophan amino acid analysis of ABRF92-AAA, in Techniques in Protein Chemistry IV (Angeletti, R.H., ed.) Academic Press, San Diego, CA, pp. 279–288.
Chiou, S. H. and Wang, K.-T. (1990) A rapid and novel means of protein hydrolysis by microwave irradiation using Teflon-Pyrex tubes, in Current Research in Protein Chemistry, vol. 3 (Villafranca, J. J., ed.) Academic Press, San Diego, CA, pp 3–10.
Gilman, L. B. and Woodward, C. (1990) An evaluation of microwave heating for the hydrolysis of proteins, in Current Research in Protein Chemistry, vol. 3 (Villafranca, J. J., ed.) Academic Press, San Diego, CA, pp. 23–26.
Capony, J.-P. and Demaille, J. G. (1983) A rapid microdetermination of phosphoserine, phosphothreonine and phosphotyrosine in proteins by automatic cation exchange on a conventional amino acid analyser. Anal. Biochem. 128, pp. 206–212.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2003 Humana Press Inc.
About this protocol
Cite this protocol
Davidson, I. (2003). Hydrolysis of Samples for Amino Acid Analysis. In: Smith, B.J. (eds) Protein Sequencing Protocols. Methods in Molecular Biology™, vol 211. Humana Press. https://doi.org/10.1385/1-59259-342-9:111
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1385/1-59259-342-9:111
Publisher Name: Humana Press
Print ISBN: 978-0-89603-975-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-59259-342-2
eBook Packages: Springer Protocols