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Indole, skatole, indole-3-acetic acid, indole-3-propionic acid, tryptamine, and free tryptophan have been extracted from rat fecal samples and quantitated by thin-layer chromatography. Additional tryptophan metabolites have been recovered in yields of 87-97% from supplemented fecal samples. Detection limits for all the compounds studied were in the 0.1 mug/g feces range. Quantitation was possible in the mug/g range with an estimated accuracy of plus or minus 10%.

Sensitive methods for the determination of deuterated and non-deuterated indole-3-acetic acid and 5-hydroxyindole-3-acetic acid by combined capillary gas chromatography-negative-ion chemical ionization mass spectrometry were developed. Indole-3-acetic and 5-hydroxyindole-3-acetic acids were converted into pentafluorobenzyl and trifluoroacetylmethyl derivatives, respectively, after pre-purification by high-performance liquid chromatography. These derivatives were separated by gas chromatography and determined by selected ion monitoring. In the determinations, indole-3-acetic-2,2,2',4',5',6',7'-d7 acid and 5-hydroxyindole-3-acetic-3,3-d2 acid were used as internal standards. The methods developed in this work were used for the determination of deuterated and non-deuterated indole-3-acetic acid and 5-hydroxyindole-3-acetic acid in human urine samples collected before and after administration of L-tryptophan-3,3-d2.

Performance of the apparatus was evaluated in terms of stationary phase retention, partition efficiency and sample loading capacity. Preliminary studies with short coils revealed high retention of the stationary phase under a proper combination of the head-tail elution and planetary motion. Preparative capability of the apparatus was successfully demonstrated on efficient multigram separations of 2,4-dinitrophenyl amino acids, indole auxins, and bacitracin in a pair of large multilayer coils with a total capacity of 1.5 l.

The cross-axis synchronous flow-through coil planet centrifuge with a 20-cm revolutional radius and a total capacity of 1600 ml was successfully applied to preparative counter-current chromatography of various biological samples, which include sea buckthorn extract, steroid reaction mixture, indole plant hormones, and dinitrophenylamino acids. The present system offers advantages of stable balance of the centrifuge, a large column capacity, and high resolution.