I break the cell wall using homogeniser and extract the PHB using chloroform.
estimation of PHB is done by Law and. Slepecky, (1961) method using sulphuric acid. but during estimation some unknown intracellular product is interferring as explained by above reference.... how to avoid this.... can anyone help?
I tried extracting it using the chloroform method, however this is extremely time consuming and tedious especially if you have a number of samples.
I then dried the entire biomass sample (freeze dryer) and used Pyrolysis GC-MS. This works well and its quick. It will also give you an idea of which isomers are present.
Either way, I found it difficult to get PHA standards other than PHB.