Effects of Extraction Solvents on the Quantification of Free Amino Acids in Lyophilised Brewer’s Yeast

The aim of this work was to test some solvents in order to improve the free amino acids extraction from lyophilised brewer’s yeast. The brewer’ yeast was treated with four types of extraction solvents: Solvent I – acetonitrile 25%/HCl 0.01M (ACN); Solvent II – ethanol 80%; solvent III – HCl 0.05M/deionized water (1/1 volume); Solvent IV – HCl 0.05M/ethanol 80% (1/1 volume). The supernatants were analysed by HPLC-DAD-ESI-MS method. Acetonitrile provided the less quantities and number of amino acids extracted due to its weaker polarity. Solvent II and IV (ethanol, respectively acidified ethanol), which have an increased polarity, extracted 15 amino acids due to the addition of HCl in solvent IV. Solvent III (acidified water) proved to be the best extraction solvent for the amino acids from brewer’s yeast providing the separation of 17 compounds: GLN, ASN, SER, GLY, ALA, ORN, PRO, HIS, LYS, GLU, TRP, LEU, PHE, ILE, AAA, HPHE, TYR.