Abstract: | A high-performance liquid chromatographic method for the analysis of hydroxyproline and proline has been developed. The method is based on the derivatization of the secondary amino group with dabsyl-chloride after blocking of the primary amino group with o-phthalaldehyde. Dabsyl-hydroxyproline and dabsyl-proline were separated from other amino acids by high-performance liquid chromatography in the gradient elution mode, and eluted at 10.27 and 16.02 min, respectively. The correlations between the peak areas of dabsyl-hydroxyproline and dabsyl-proline were linear in the range from 20–200 pmol, with equations y = 1.10x − 0.80 (r = 0.999) and y = 1.12x − 0.52 (r = 0.999), respectively. The method was applied to the analysis of rat tail collagen, and the contents of hydroxyproline and proline were 1.55 ± 0.04 and 2.03 ± 0.04 nmol/μg, respectively. |