Single-run high-performance liquid chromatography of nucleotides, nucleosides, and major purine bases and its application to different tissue extracts

A high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method is described for the separation and quantitation of nucleotides, nucleosides, purine bases, and related compounds in one single run. The separation of a standard mixture of at least 24 components is achieved within 35 min on glass columns (30 cm, 3-mm i.d.) with C-18 reversed-phase particles of 5 micron, and ammonium dihydrogen phosphate (0.15 M, pH 6.00) and a slow linear gradient of methanol/acetonitrile (to 15%) as eluting solvent. The method has been applied to microsamples of different cells and tissues. Samples (2.5 mg dry wt) were cooled in liquid nitrogen, lyophilized, and extracted with 0.6 N perchloric acid. After neutralization with potassium bicarbonate, the extract (20 microliter) was directly injected into the column. To illustrate the wide applicability of the method, representative chromatograms are shown of extracts of biopsies from heart tissue, skeletal muscle, and brain and liver and from hepatocytes, erythrocytes, and yeast cells, under different conditions, known to induce changes in purine metabolism.