In food research there is an important requirement for the rapid determination of amino acids. Large numbers of samples for amino acid analysis are produced by studies on the optimization of animal feed constitutents and the development of novel sources of protein.
Several methods of automating the data processing of amino acid analysis have been published. Graham and Sheldrick (1) described a program in KDF 9 Algol which processes a height and width of each peak obtained manually from the chart. More recently, Starbuck et al.
(2), Ozawa and Tanaka (3)) and Gerding (4) developed programs utilizing the data obtained by manual calculation or by an integrator. Data processing was further automated by the use of logging equipment. Porter and Talley (5), Yonda et al. ( 6)) and Krichevsky et al. ( 7) used methods whereby the voltage was digitized from the photometer circuit, and a punched paper tape was produced which could be processed by computer to produce peak areas. Cavins and Friedman (8) recorded the photometer output on magnetic tape, which was played into an electronic integrator, producing punched paper tape for processing on an IBM 1130 computer. A relatively simple system was described by Robins et aZ. ( 9). A data logger is used to sample the voltage from a retransmitting slide wire. The output tape is processed using a program written in Elliott 803 Algol. This follows exactly the manual calculation according to the t,rapezium rule and gives a printout of areas in the same units. An attempt has been made by Exss et al. (10) to identify as well as quantitatively determine amino acids from the data provided by an integrator attached to a standard Technicon analyzer using a 22 hr run.
The program presented here is written in Fortran IV for use with an IBM 1130 comput,er. The output produced gives the peak areas, identifies up to thirty amino acids, and prints out per cent composition of the 'A complete listing of the program in Fortran IV can be made available on request.