A novel strategy for the determination of enantiomeric compositions of chiral compounds by chemometric analysis of the UV-vis spectra of bovine serum albumin receptor-ligand mixtures

In this work, a novel strategy was constructed to determine the enantiomeric composition of chiral substances discriminated by bovine serum albumin (BSA) based on the UV-vis spectra of the receptor-ligand mixtures coupled with partial least squares (PLS-1) analysis. Taking tryptophan (Trp) enantiomer as an example, when 20 μM BSA was used, the enantiomeric composition was accurately determined with concentration of only 100 nM and the corresponding enantiomeric excess as high as 98% (or −98%), which is relatively more sensitive than in literature. Furthermore, the BSA-based approach was also used to predict the enantiomeric composition of other chiral compounds, such as phenylalanine (Phe), tyrosine (Tyr), alanine (Ala), cysteine (Cys), DOPA and propranolol (Prop). The results fully demonstrate that BSA is effective in determination of enantiomeric composition of some chiral compounds.