Determination of Edible BirdÕs Nest and Its Products by Gas Chromatography

Published: Journal of Chromatographic Science, ISSN 0021-9665 Volume 38, Number 1, January 2000, pp. 27-32

Determination of Edible Bird’s Nest and Its Products by Gas Chromatography
Yu Yu-Qin*, Xue Liang, Wang Hua, and Zhou Hui-Xing
Shanghai Food Industry Research Institute, Shanghai 200052, China
Zhu Xin-Fang and Li Bu-Sen
Shanghai Centre of Trace Element Analysis, Shanghai 201800, China

A specific gas chromatographic (GC) detection method for edible bird’s nest (EBN) based on identifying the composition of the oligosaccharide chain combined with glycoprotein in EBN is developed. Five monoses (d-mannitose, d-galactose, N-acetyl-d-galactosamine, N-acetyl-d-glucosamine, and N-acetyl neuraminate) that constitute the oligosaccharide chain are detected using GC and GC–mass spectrometry techniques; their characteristic GC spectrum can reliably be regarded as EBN’s fingerprint. The peak-area ratios in GC spectrum of those five monoses are found to be fixed; therefore, the GC technique developed in this work can conveniently be used to determine various raw EBNs and their products both qualitatively and quantitatively, distinguishing between fake and genuine EBN rapidly.

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