New retention mechanism of mononucleotides with buffer concentrations in ion-suppressing RP-HPLC

HPLC separation of ionic samples tends to be more complicated and difficult to understand than that of non-ionic compounds. On the other hand, band spacing is much more easily manipulated for ionic than for neutral samples. Ion-suppressing RP-HPLC method was used with organic modifier and aqueous buffer solution. In this work, five mononucleotides of cytidine-5-monophosphate (5-CMP) disodium salt, uridine-5-monophosphate disodium salt (5-UMP), guanosine-5-monophosphate disodium salt (5-GMP), inosine-5-monophosphate disodium salt (5-IMP), and adenosine-5-monophosphate disodium salt (5-AMP) were examined. Acetic acid and sodium phosphate were used as buffers, and methanol as an organic modifier. A new relationship between the retention factor and the buffer concentration at a fixed modifier content (5% of methanol) could be expressed by following: k = (k_-1 + k₀ (K _B/K_S) C_B^a)/(1 + (K _B/K_S) C_B^a), where C_B was the concentration of buffer. Using this relationship, the calculated values closely matched the experimental data. The derived relationship showed that as the buffer concentration increased, the retention factor approached a certain value, and this was buffer dependent.