Lowra

I need to see what amino acids are present in a sample from a lump of meat. I take another sample, cook it, and see if the amino acid composition changes. Does anybody know the best way to do this? I feel paper chromatography is too simple, SDS PAGE goes by molecular weight and it looks like amino acids are too small to get accurate results, ion exchange chromatography? What about high-voltage electrophoresis? Any help is MUCH appreciated.

I really want to compare Amino Acid content between different meat samples, and see how cooking affects this. I want to avoid HPLC but am confused as to wether my sample just needs blending, diluting, hydrolysis, buffer or other treatments? And after ion exchange I am thinking post column OPA tagging for detection but am unsure what equipment is needed for this? Does any of this actually make sense? :S

As a newcomer to the world of biochemistry I am finding it quite tough to pin down some of the details needed for the study that I will be doing for my dissertation. I am currently thinking that I will be using Ion exchange chromatography for this study but I am unclear how to create good testable samples from the raw and cooked food samples that I will be analysing. Any suggestions would be miraculous. Thank you for any help you can offer.