Applications of in-capillary reaction micellar electrokinetic chromatography in the food industry

This review describes the quantitative analysis of in-capillary reactions b y using capillary electrophoresis (CE) in the food industry. An electrophor etic analysis of products of an enzyme reaction of a substrate by in-capill ary reaction was useful for the activity measurement of glucoamylase in sak e rice koji. p-Nitrophenyl-beta-D-maltoside was employed as a substrate and p-nitrophenyl-beta-D-glucopyranoside was the product of the enzyme reactio n. The glucoamylase activity of sake rice koji samples gave a good linear r elationship with the peak area observed in the in-capillary enzyme reaction method. Also, in-capillary micellar electrokinetic chromatography (MEKC) w as used for analyzing the Monascus pigment-mediated degradation of mutageni c 3-hydroxyamino-1-methyl-SH-pyrido [4,3-b]indole. During the electrophores is, the mutagen and the pigment, due to their different migration velocitie s, mix for a certain period of time to interact, and then they are separate d and quantitated. The in-capillary reaction MEKC method can be applied to the routine quality control of enzyme activities in the food industry and t he evaluation of mutagenic compounds in food materials. (C) 2000 Elsevier S cience B.V. All rights reserved.