Behaviour of diastereoisomers of synthetic analogues of destruxin using high performance liquid chromatography and fast-atom bombardment mass spectrometry

The two synthetic diastereoisomers of propargyl‐6‐destruxin [Hpy‐6‐DTX] differing only in the configuration of the asymmetric carbon of the α‐hydroxy acid are shown to be metabolized into the corresponding ring‐opened peptides at quite different rates. The behaviours were followed using fast‐Atom bombardment mass spectrometry in negative‐ion mode and C4 large‐pore reverse‐phase high performance liquid chromatography and correlated with the very different biological activities. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.