Is the thin layer chromatography coupled to densitometer expensive? Any rough figures?

Can u specifiy which oligosaccharides in particular u want to quantify?

See Bounias, 1980, Analytical Biochemistry 106:291-295. This describes the method we use. Using an inexpensive flatbed scanner coupled to our PC, and UnScanIt software from Silk Scientific Co., we get fairly reproducible results. It isn't quite as good as HPAEC-PAD or HPLC, but for screening multiple reactions quickly and cheaply, it serves our purpose.

I want to quantify sugars of DP1-DP7 after hydrolysis.

you can run TLC and then add the standard sample. visualization the TLC with orcinol reagent, quantify it with scanner.

That's exactly what we do - DP 2-8, using the Bounias method for detection. If you're separating glucose oligomers, I can send you references to some of our papers.

The N-1-naphthyl(ethylenediamine)•2HCl reagent is much more sensitive than orcinol or sulfuric acid and gives different colors for aldoses, ketoses, deoxy-sugars, etc. For DP 2-8 oligosaccharides, we use multiple ascents on silica gel plates in ethyl acetate - 1-propanol - acetonitrile - water, 4:10:14:11 by vol. Two or three ascents work best, depending on the linkage types. See, for example, Côté, G.L. and Leathers, T.D. 2005. Journal of Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology 32: 53-60.

you can use TLC and develop chromatogram with anisaldehyde sulfuric acid spray reagent to identify the monomers by its color and Rf value.

if you use TLC that is good for qaulitatve but TLC for qauntitative not accurate than HPLC

It is better to use HP-TLC if possible.In case of oligosaccharides it can be used semi-quantitatively;however you will need a shit lot of standardization with the mobile phase.

I do not suggest TLC to quantify oligosaccharides. You can have just an idea of which oligo is more abundant than others. HPLC with PAD (pulsed amperometric detector) can be the best choice. This detector is very sensitive and it borns for sugar quantification. It is more sensitive than refractive index.

I will suggest one article about a HPTLC-method, I´ve found on ScienceDirect:

Production of xylooligosaccharides from corncob xylan by fungal xylanase and their utilization by probiotics.

Digantkumar Chapla, Pratima Pandit, Amita Shah

Bioresource Technology: Volume 115, July 2012, Pages 215–221

Greg, do you know any alternatives to K5F silica plates? It seems that Whatman has discontinued their TLC plate range. And when you say flatbed scanner, do you mean typical desktop scanner? Thanks!