>I am preparing an undergraduate lab on the separation of plant pigments from
>rapid cycling Brassica rapa (RCBr) seedlings of the following stocks - highly
>expressed anthocyanin (ANL/ANL), anthocyaninless (anl/anl), and F1 (ANL/anl)
>and have done some preliminary work extracting and separating the pigments.
>I've extracted pigments from 3 day old seedlings by homogenization in 1% HCl
>in 95% ethanol and run them on silica gel TLC using 10% acetic acid in water.
>
>I would like to use a solvent system to better resolve these pigments. The
>hydrophobic ones don't move at all; the hydrophilic ones all stack up at the
>top. I would appreciate any suggestions.
>> Lynn Radlick
Lynn,
If you are using 10% acetic acid as a TLC solvent, then you have surely
converted all the chlorophyll to pheophytin, which should give red
fluorescence under UV light. I have a web site as part of my biochemistry
course which has a whole semester of plant pigment exercises which might
give you some ideas for new experiments. Feel free to visit and copy any
that you like.
http://www.pigment.unl.edu
I hope that some of this is useful
John
John Markwell markwell at unl.edu
Department of Biochemistry Phone: 402-472-2924
Beadle Center FAX: 402-472-7842
Univeristy of Nebraska
Lincoln, NE 68588-0664
