Scallops are consumed globally due to their good and distinctive taste. Particularly, scallops are popular and have high amounts of taste-related amino acids. The amino acid profile should thus be investigated as a significant amount of taste-related amino acidsmay be found in scallops. Currently, a specialized HPLC with a fluorescent detector is used for amino acid analysis but this method has its limitationsdue to its low flexibility and high operational cost. In this study, scallop-derived amino acids were derivatized to PTC-amino acids using phenylisothiocyanate (PITC),and analyzed for the taste-related amino acids using a versatile HPLC with a UV detector. I focused on glutamine acid, glycine, alanine, and arginine, as these are the major taste components in scallops. First, Iexamined 0.5 mM of each, as well asamixed amino acid solution, and confirmed their detection times. Next, I examined scallop amino acid samples and compared them with standard solutions. For the PTC-amino acid derivatization, 70µL of ethanol, 20 µL of trimethylamine, and 20 µL of PITC were added to 40 µL of sample solution and reacted for 30 min. Then, I added 500 µL of 50 mM acetic acid buffer (pH = 6.0):acetonitrile (97:3) to the reaction mixture, filtered using a 0.22-µm filter, andanalyzed these samples using HPLC.The confirmeddetection times for each sample are as follows:4.2 ± 0.2 min (Glutamine acid), 7.2 ± 0.2 min (glycine), 8.4 ± 0.2 min (alanine), and 7.8 ± 0.2 min (arginine) both in separateand mixture solutions. These detection times were confirmed in both scallop samples. Therefore, Iestablished an approach to determine taste-related amino acids in scallops using HPLC with a UV detector and derivatization to PTC-amino acids.

 

Keywords: Taste-related amino acid, Scallop, HPLC, UV detector, PTC-amino acids