Separation of peptides by multimode chromatography on a column packed with vinyl alcohol copolymer gel

Several mechanisms of peptide separation in high-performance liquid chromatography were observed to occur on the Asahipak GS-320 packed with vinyl alcohol copolymer. Neutral rather than acidic mobile phases were employed as they were found to result in higher retention of many peptides on the GS-320. For neutral peptides, the retention volume corresponded to the Rekker's hydrophobic fragmental constant, with a correlation coefficient of 0.71. Peptides with acidic residues eluted early, as an effect of ionic exclusion; those with basic residues were retained longer, owing to an ion-exchange effect. The ionic interactions were shown to involve the carboxylic group present on the gel polymer. The net result was found to be excellent separation of hydrophilic as well as hydrophobic peptides, related to differences in their isoelectric points. The combination of these complex mechanisms, together with the size-exclusion effect of the GS-320 gel for separation of proteins and other large molecules and for analysis with a mobile phase high in acetonitrile content, makes possible high-resolution isocratic analysis of peptides, which cannot be achieved on octadecylsilica or ion-exchange columns.