Chiral speciation of selenoamino acids in biological samples

• The “state of the art” of chiral speciation of SeAAs is reviewed.
• Hyphenation technique is most effective for chiral speciation of SeAAs.
• More methodological development and application in biological samples is expected.
• Chiral speciation benefits to understand the metabolism of SeAAs in organism.

In this paper, the “state of the art” of chiral speciation of selenoamino acids (SeAAs) in biological samples is critically reviewed. The significance and the features of such studies are highlighted. A special focus lies on chiral speciation of SeAAs by hyphenation techniques in which a chiral separation method (such as gas chromatography (GC), high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and capillary electrophoresis (CE)) is on-line coupled with an elemental specific detector, especially inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). The advances in the development and application of hyphenation techniques in chiral speciation of SeAAs in biological samples are summarized and a perspective for future developments including sophisticated and innovative applications is discussed. Overall, HPLC-ICP-MS is more applicable than GC/CE-ICP-MS for chiral speciation of SeAAs. In the future, more novel chiral HPLC methods with high enantio-resolution, low cost and robustness, and their more applications in real biological samples analysis are expected.