Simultaneous analysis of amino acids and amines as their o-phthalaldehyde-ethanethiol-9-fluorenylmethyl chloroformate derivatives in cheese by high-performance liquid chromatography.

A high-performance liquid chromatographic method (HPLC) with combined diode array and fluorescence detection of amino acids and amines in various cheese samples is described. The proposal is based on acidic deproteinization, derivatization and gradient optimization studies, resulting in the identification and quantification of 21 amino acids and 9 amines from a single solution, by one injection. The optimized, simple protocol consists of deproteinization (1M perchloric acid), centrifugation, filtration and the subsequent derivatization with the o-phthalaldehyde-ethanethiol-9-fluorenylmethyl chloroformate (OPA-ET-FMOC) reagent. The method can be characterized with a linearity of wide concentration range (6.25-1000 pM/injection), a good chromatographic reproducibility (average: 2.69% RSD) and an excellent recovery (average: 100.2%; average 3.84% RSD). The developed method was successfully applied in the determination of the amino acid and amine contents of port salut cheese, blue cheese and smoked cheese samples.