Analysis of amino acid neurotransmitters from rat and mouse spinal cords by liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection

A RP-LC-FL detection method has been developed to identify and quantitate four amino acid neurotransmitters including glutamic acid, glycine, taurine and γ-aminobutyric acid in rat and mouse spinal cord tissue. 3-(4-carboxybenzoyl)-2-quinolinecarboxaldehyde (CBQCA) was employed for the derivatization of these neurotransmitters prior to RP-LC-FL analysis. Different parameters which influenced separation and derivatization were optimized. Under optimum conditions, linearity was achieved within the concentration ranges of 0.50-50.00 μM for all analytes with correlation coefficients from 0.9912 to 0.9997. The LODs ranged from 0.03 μM to 0.06 μM. The proposed method has been successfully applied to the determination of amino acid neurotransmitters in biological samples such as rat and mouse spinal cord with satisfactory recoveries.