Chromatography Forum

I was wondering if anyone here has experience doing the amino acid analysis gas chromatography methods. I came accross a couple including Phenomenex's kit a method using simple derivitization with propyl chloroformate
http://epub.uni-regensburg.de/12318/1/H ... 090719.pdf

A Sigma Aldrich method using N-tert-butyldimethylsilyl- N-methyltrifluoroacetamide to derivitize them.

I am looking for a method that is fairly simple, robust, and cheap. A lot of the methods use isotopic dilution which I'd rather avoid that and just use norvaline as an ITSD if it is reasonably accurate.

So far all the methods I've seen are unable to deal with arginine. Its guanidino group is apararently either resistant to derivitazation or thermally unstable. It looks like most labs doing GC amino acids use Phenomenex's EZFAAST or a varient of it using alkyl chloroformate for derivitization.