[chenpv]

Hello everyone, I am a newbie here in this forum and this is my first post. First, I would like to thank the administrator who created this wonderful site. Second, I wound like to thank all the other members who come and share their priceless thoughts on science.Here please allow me to fire my first SOS signal and I do appreciate it if you could kindly express your opinions.

My primary question concerns the discrimination of pyruvate from alpha - ketoglutaric acid on test paper at room temperature without assistance of other instrument (which means palpable to eyes/nose/ears etc.). By my limited knowledge of organic chemistry, the only possible way I can think of is to find a reagent which specifically interacts with either of them and shows a distinct color change. But unfortunately, I haven't found one yet. So I wonder if any pundit out there knows:

(1) Any way to distinguish these two chemicals, except that of by color change?
(2) Since pyruvate has a distinct acetyl radical, is there any reaction that is specific to this radical?

If there was no favorable way of examining pyruvate, I am able to convert pyruvate to lactate acid by means of enzyme-catalyzed reaction. So I wonder:

Is there any method to examine lactate acid by some sensitive inorganic reaction?

Thank you for your opinions.

PS: My questions, though based on biochemistry, seem to be more related with organic/inorganic chemistry. So if moderator doesn't think this post relevant in this subforum, I would appreciate it if someone help put it in the right place.

Chenpv

[Yggdrasil]

You are correct when you point to the acetyl moiety of pyruvate as its distinguishing feature.  To test for methyl ketones, you can perform the haloform reaction with I₂ in aqueous KOH.  If a methyl ketone is present, iodoform (CHI₃) forms as a yellow precipitate.

[chenpv]

Thank you very much, Yggdrasil.