Recent progress in capillary electrophoretic analysis of amino acid enantiomers

This review highlights recent progresses in capillary electrophoresis (CE) analysis of amino acid enantiomers in the last decade. Various chiral selectors including cyclodextrins (CDs), bile salts, crown ethers, cinchona alkaloids, metal–chiral amino acid complexes, macrocyclic antibiotics and proteins have been employed to separate amino acid enantiomers. In the CE analysis of amino acids, the selection of the separation mode is one of the most important issues to obtain good resolution of target enantiomers. Among several separation modes, CD-modified capillary zone electrophoresis (CD-CZE), CD electrokinetic chromatography (CDEKC), micellar EKC (MEKC), CD-modified micellar electrokinetic chromatography (CD-MEKC), capillary electrochromatography (CEC), ligand-exchange CE (LE-CE), and nonaqueous CE (NACE) have been employed to the chiral analysis of amino acids. More than 160 published research articles collected from SciFinder Scholar databases from the year 2001 described the enantioseparations of amino acids by capillary-based electrophoresis. This review provides a comprehensive table listing the CE analysis of amino acid enantiomers with categorizing by the separation modes.