CHIRAL SEPARATIONS USING AN IMMOBILIZED PROTEIN-DEXTRAN POLYMER NETWORK IN AFFINITY CAPILLARY ELECTROPHORESIS

An improvement in affinity capillary electrophoresis (ACE) was achieve d by covalently linking bovine serum albumin (BSA) to a high-molecular -mass dextran (M(r) 2 000 000) using cyanogen bromide. The efficiency of the binding reaction was greater than 99%, measured through quantit ative separation of the protein and protein-dextran polymer network mi xture on a bare capillary using capillary electrophoresis (CE). Baseli ne separation of leucovorin (LV) enantiomers was obtained under 9 min using a linear polyacrylamide-coated capillary (with an effective leng th of 20 cm) filled with the BSA-dextran polymer network. The present work offers several significant advantages over other approaches to li gand immobilization, and can be generally applied to a wide variety of ligand-substrate systems.