Analysis of partially methyl-esterified galacturonic acid oligomers by capillary electrophoresis.

Recent progress in the determination of the intramolecular distribution of methyl-esterified residues in pectic substrates has been made using a fragmentation approach in which endopolygalacturonase is used to digest the polysaccharide and its subsequent (methyl-ester sequence-dependent) digest pattern is determined. This has been facilitated by the separation of partially methyl-esterified enzyme digest fragments using high-performance anion-exchange chromatography at pH 5. Here we demonstrate that capillary electrophoresis can be used as an additional method for separation and quantification of such digest patterns. The technique offers improvements in speed and economy of materials and a straightforward quantification procedure.