Characterization of cheese proteolysis by capillary electrophoresis and reverse-phase HPLC analyses of peptides

The possibilities of reverse-phase high performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) and capillary electrophoresis (CE) when used for separation of cheese peptides are discussed. A CE method using a coated capillary column and a low pH buffer was developed to analyze the water-soluble fraction of a 6-month-old cow’s milk cheese. The CE patterns were compared with the chromatograms obtained by RP-HPLC using a C18 column and a gradient of acetonitrile in water. The CE method gave shorter analysis times but RP-HPLC provided lower coefficients of variation of the retention times and better detection limits. In addition, the elution behavior of peptides in CE strongly depended on the sample matrix. The results show that both techniques provide complementary information for the analysis of cheese peptides.This work was supported by the project CAM-1-COR035/94 and FSIR-CT97-3173. A. Cifuentes acknowledges the support of the European Union (Training and Mobility of Researchers, Contract reference: ERBFMBICT950003