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Rapid and Sensitive Determination of L-carnitine and Acetyl-L-carnitine in Liquid Milk Samples with Capillary Zone Electrophoresis Using Indirect UV Detection

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Abstract

The purpose of this study was to establish a new capillary zone electrophoresis method with indirect UV detection for determining the concentration of L-carnitine and acetyl-L-carnitine in liquid milk samples. Orthogonal experimental design was applied to arrange and optimize the experimental conditions. Under selected conditions (using melamine as the additive), both L-carnitine and acetyl-L-carnitine could be detected in 6 min, with satisfied reproducibilities (RSD% of migration times <0.8%), linearities (r 2 > 0.995), recoveries (>90%), and relative low LODs (3.0 and 5.0 μmol/L for L-carnitine and acetyl-L-carnitine, respectively). The proposed method was successfully applied to the assay of nine brands of bovine milk samples and shows potential for analyzing L-carnitine and acetyl-L-carnitine in other biosamples.

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Acknowledgements

This study was funded by National 973 projects (2015CB856304, 2015CB553602, MOST) from the Ministry of Science and Technology, CHINA; grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of CHINA (81101674); and grants from the Natural Science Funds (2015JM3093, 2014JQ4136) and Key Science and Technology Program (2016SF-252) of Shaanxi Province, CHINA.

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  1. Yu Kong and Guifang Yang contributed equally to this paper

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Mitochondrial Biology and Medicine, Department of Biological Science and Engineering, The Key Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, Shaanxi, 710049, The People’s Republic of China

    Yu Kong, Guifang Yang, Shumeng Chen, Zhanwu Hou, Xiaomin Du, Hua Li & Linghong Kong

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  1. Yu Kong
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  2. Guifang Yang
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  3. Shumeng Chen
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  4. Zhanwu Hou
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  5. Xiaomin Du
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  6. Hua Li
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  7. Linghong Kong
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Correspondence to Linghong Kong.

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Yu Kong declares that he has no conflict of interest. Guifang Yang declares that she has no conflict of interest. Shumeng Chen declares that she has no conflict of interest. Guifang Yang declares that she has no conflict of interest. Zhanwu Hou declares that he has no conflict of interest. Xiaomin Du declares that she has no conflict of interest. Hua Li declares that he has no conflict of interest. Linghong Kong declares that he has no conflict of interest.

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This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

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Kong, Y., Yang, G., Chen, S. et al. Rapid and Sensitive Determination of L-carnitine and Acetyl-L-carnitine in Liquid Milk Samples with Capillary Zone Electrophoresis Using Indirect UV Detection. Food Anal. Methods 11, 170–177 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12161-017-0987-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12161-017-0987-y

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