Contamination of an anion-exchange membrane by glutathione

Electrodialysis, which can separate electrolytes under mild conditions by using ion-exchange membranes, is a strong candidate for separation of GSH from yeast extracts, because GSH is unstable and easily oxidized forming a disulfide bond especially under alkali conditions. In this paper, sorption behavior of GSH on an anion-exchange membrane, in the pH 3-6 region that is expected to be the most preferable for its electro-dialytic separation, was examined. Sorption of GSH on a Selemion-AMV anion-exchange membrane was accelerated as the pH of the membrane-contact solution increased, and there was a good correlation between the sorbed amounts and the molar fraction of monovalent anionic species of GSH. However, the amounts of GSH desorbed from the membrane by a NaCl desorbing solution were much lower than the initial sorbed amounts, and the difference between them was enlarged with increasing pH. The GSH which was lost could be recovered by the addition of DTT in the membrane-contact and desorbing solutions. Similar results were also obtained with Cys. We thus concluded that an anion-exchange membrane would be contaminated by thiol compounds, such as GSH and Cys, through oxidative binding of the thiol group with the membrane, the local OH- concentration in which was enhanced due to attraction by the positively charged anion-exchange membrane.