באמצעות אלקטרופורזה נימים לכמת חומצות אורגניות מרקמות צמח: מקרה מבחן בחינה<em> קפה ערביקה</em> זרעים

Carboxylic acids are organic compounds containing one or more terminal carboxyl functional groups, each attached to an R-group containing one or more carbons (R-C[O]OH). Short chain, low molecular weight carboxylic acids (short chain carboxylic acids, SCCAs) containing between one and six carbons, are essential components of cellular respiration, and function in several biochemical pathways necessary for cell growth and development. SCCAs play critical roles in cellular metabolism¹, cell signaling², and organismal responses to the environment (such as antibiosis³). Because of this, SCCAs can serve as useful indicators of disruptions to cellular metabolism, plant stress responses^4,5, and fruit quality^6,7. To date, SCCAs have been quantified primarily through chromatographic techniques such as high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) or gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy (GC-MS). While these methods, are capable of achieving very low limits of detection, they can be expensive, require the derivatization of target SCCAs using caustic and/or toxic reagents, and include lengthy separation runs on the GC or HPLC. Because of this, interest in the use of free zonal capillary electrophoresis (CZE), which does not require sample derivatization, to quantify organic acids has steadily increased⁸.

Free zonal capillary electrophoresis (CZE) is a chromatographic separation methodology that, due to its high number of theoretical plates, speed, and relative ease-of-use, is increasingly replacing both GC-MS and high-pressure liquid chromatography as an analytical method for the quantification (particularly for quality control purposes) of anions, cations, amino acids, carbohydrates, and short chain carboxylic acids (SCCAs)^8,9,10. CZE-based separation of small molecules, including SCCAs, is based two primary principles: the electrophoretic movement of charged ions in an electrical field established across the buffer filling the capillary; and the electro-osmotic movement of the entire buffer system from one end of the capillary to the other, generally towards the negative electrode. In this system, small molecules move towards the negative electrode at varying speeds, with the speed of each molecule determined by the ratio of the net charge of the molecule to the molecular mass. As the movement of each individual molecule in this system is dependent on the charge state of the molecule and the overall rate of electro-osmotic flow (which is itself based on the ion content of the buffer used to fill the capillary), the buffer pH and ionic composition heavily impact the degree to which molecules can be efficiently separated using CZE. Because of this, SCCAs, with their relatively high charge-to-mass ratios, are ideal targets for CZE-based separation. Metabolites separated using CZE can be detected using a variety of methods, including UV absorbance, spectral absorbance (which is generally performed using a photo-diode array [PDA]), and/or mass spectroscopy (CE-MS or CE-MS/MS)⁸. The diversity of separation and detection methods provided by CZE makes it an extremely flexible and adaptable technique. Because of this, CZE has been increasingly applied as a standard method of analysis in the areas of food safety and quality^11,12, pharmaceutical research¹³, and environmental monitoring^13,14.

Capillary electrophoresis has been used to detect and quantify short chain carboxylic acids for nearly two decades¹³. The resolving power (particularly for small, charged molecules), short run time, and low per sample cost of CZE analyses make CZE an ideal technique for the separation and quantification of SCCAs¹³. This method presents a protocol to utilize CZE to measure the concentration of organic acids from plant tissues. Example data was generated through the successful implementation of this protocol to measure the change in organic acid levels in coffee seeds following a secondary fermentation treatment. The protocol details the critical steps and common errors of CZE-based separation of SCCAs, and discusses the means by which this protocol can be successfully applied to quantify SCCAs in additional plant tissues.