Capillary zone electrophoresis and open tubular liquid chromatography are two examples of an emerging area of analytical instrumentation known as microcolumn separations. The high resolution and small sample requirements of these methods make them suitable for the quantitative, multicomponent chemical analysis of single cells. Appropriate instrumentation for the analysis of nanoliter and subnanoliter samples is discussed. Data from the analysis of individual neurons are presented, including amino acid and neurotransmitter content.

A method is described for the determination of amino acids in individual cells. The amino acids are derivatized with naphthalene-2,3-dicarboxaldehyde and then analyzed by open tubular liquid chromatography with amperometric detection. The total volume present after derivatization is approximately 25 nL. It was possible to quantitatively determine 17 amino acids in three different neurons of the land snail Helix aspersa. Quantitation was accomplished through the use of two internal standards and a calibration curve. Alanine was found to be the most abundant amino acid by about a factor of 2 over glutamine in all three types of neurons. This method has the advantages of sensitivity in the attomole range (5 X 10(-9) M) and selectivity for a specific class of compounds and is at least as reliable as other methods used for single-cell analysis.

Naphthalene-2,3-dicarboxaldehyde (NDA) has been investigated as a new derivatizing reagent for the electrochemical detection of tagged amino acids. Gradient elution allowed for the separation of 18 NDA-derivatized amino acids on an open tubular liquid chromatography column in less than 50 min. Gradient elution and electrochemical detection were found to be compatible. A detection limit of 36 amol was obtained for the asparagine-NDA derivative. The usefulness of this technique for quantitation was demonstrated by the analysis of the NDA-tagged hydrolysis products from bovine chymotrypsinogen.

A method is described for the hydrolysis and quantitative amino acid analysis of as little as 0.1 ng (4 fmol) of protein. Hydrolysis is performed by using a gas-phase method. The resulting amino acids are derivatized with naphthalene-2,3-dicarboxaldehyde and then analyzed by open tubular liquid chromatography with amperometric detection. The total volume present after derivatization is approximately 25 nL. To our knowledge this is currently the lowest level of protein to be quantitatively analyzed, as well as the smallest volume in which derivatization has been accomplished. It was possible to quantitatively determine 14 amino acids with an error of 5.0% for known protein and 8.5% for a protein whose identity was unknown to the researcher.

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