High-performance liquid chromatographic analysis of retinal and retinol isomers

J Chromatogr A. 1996 Jan 19;721(2):247-59. doi: 10.1016/0021-9673(95)00789-x.

Abstract

Normal-phase chromatograms of retinal- and retinol isomers using various mobile phrases are presented, showing that in n-hexane--tert.-butyl methyl ether and also in n-heptane--tert.-butyl methyl ether the elution order for retinol is 13-cis-, 11-cis-, 9-cis- and all trans-retinol, whereas in n-hexane-1,4-dioxane 11-cis- elutes before 13-cis-retinol. Assignment of these main retinal and retinol peaks was performed using pure crystals of isomers, measurement of absorbance spectra and analysis of NMR spectra. The new mobile phase n-heptane-tert.-butyl methyl ether allows best baseline separation of the commonly occurring isomeric forms in reasonably short analysis time. In addition, eight di-cis- and tri-cis-retinol isomers were tentatively identified. The chromatograms show that former identifications in the literature are inconsistent or wrong.

MeSH terms

  • Chromatography, High Pressure Liquid / methods*
  • Chromatography, High Pressure Liquid / statistics & numerical data
  • Crystallization
  • Dioxanes
  • Heptanes
  • Hexanes
  • Indicators and Reagents
  • Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy
  • Methyl Ethers
  • Retinaldehyde / analysis*
  • Retinaldehyde / chemistry
  • Stereoisomerism
  • Vitamin A / analysis*
  • Vitamin A / chemistry

Substances

  • Dioxanes
  • Heptanes
  • Hexanes
  • Indicators and Reagents
  • Methyl Ethers
  • Vitamin A
  • methyl tert-butyl ether
  • n-hexane
  • n-heptane
  • 1,4-dioxane
  • Retinaldehyde