Analysis of Glutathione and Glutathione Disulfide in Whole Cells and Mitochondria by Postcolumn Derivatization High-Performance Liquid Chromatography with ortho-Phthalaldehyde

A method is described for the detection of glutathione (GSH) and glutathione disulfide (GSSG) based on a HPLC postcolumn reaction with ortho-phthalaldehyde (OPT) at pH 12 followed by fluorescence detection. Although similar methods have been reported, the high pH of the postcolumn reaction adds considerable selectivity and sensitivity to the measurement of GSH and glutathione disulfide. The limit of detection approaches 100 fmol, which is sufficient to detect whole-cell glutathione disulfide in 10,000 cells or mitochondrial glutathione disulfide in 20 million cells. Using this method, glutathione and glutathione disulfide were measured in human lymphocytes, granulocytes, and cultured Jurkat T cells, as well as in the corresponding samples of mitochondria. The percentage of glutathione disulfide to total glutathione in whole-cell extracts was approximately 1%. In contrast, the percentage was relatively high in mitochondria, with the mitochondria of granulocytes having the highest (25%) followed by those of lymphocytes (15%) and finally by cultured Jurkat T cells (9%). This method extends the analysis of glutathione and glutathione disulfide to mitochondria obtained from a relatively small number of cells.