A new technique of ion beam tritium labelling

In this paper a new technique is reported for tritium labelling of proteins, peptides and other nonvolatile organic compounds. A tritium ion beam is accelerated to bombard solid sample target for producing tritium exchange with hydrogen. The tritium labelling method has been applied to tritiated soybean trypsin inhibitor, ribonuclease A, elastin, pachyman and others totalled 11. After purifying by dialysis, ion exchange chromatography and gel filtration, the tritiated proteins and polysaccharide were obtained with specific activity over 37 GBq/mmol, without decomposition and with biological activity well preserved. By amino acid analysis of tritiated protein it was shown that the relative specific radioactivities for His., Tyr. and Phe. residues were higher while those for Val., Ile. and Ser. residues were lower