Chromatography of methyl ethers of d-glucosamine

Abstract Identification of methyl ethers obtained by methylation and subsequent hydrolysis is a powerful technique for determination of linkage positions in structure studies of complex carbohydrates. Although methyl ethers of neutral sugars have been separated by various chromatographic methods, separation of methyl ethers of 2-amino-2-deoxy- d -glucose has been more difficult. Only recently, successful procedures for separation of methyl ethers of d -glucosamine based on thin-layer (1), gas (2), and column (3) chromatography have appeared in literature. We wish to report here a method for separation of d -glucosamine methyl ethers using a combination of partition and ion-exchange chromatography.