Accepted answer
Read the chromatogram before you read the number, because the number without the trace is not a measurement, it is a claim.
Tailing factor measures peak shape, and a badly tailing peak spreads into the region where small impurities live, forcing tangent-skim integration that assigns tail area to the main peak.
Retention time is sequence-specific and method-specific, so comparing your result to a supplier value using a different method is meaningless without method documentation.
Inter-laboratory studies on identical peptide material routinely find half-a-per-cent to a full-per-cent spreads in reported purity on the same sample.
The practical summary: ask for the chromatogram and the method, and ignore the headline number until you have both.
3Adding for future readers: the certificate should carry the lot number, not just a batch code. – tess_amankwah 3 months ago add a comment