Quantitative Sequencing of Complex Mixtures of Heterochitooligosaccharides by vMALDI-Linear Ion Trap Mass Spectrometry

摘要

Heterochitooligosaccharides possess interesting biologicalproperties. Isobaric mixtures of such linear heterochi-tooligosaccharides can be obtained by chemical or enzymatic degradation of chitosan. However, the separation of such mixtures is a challenging analytical problem which is so far unresolved. It is shown that these isobaric mixtures can be sequenced and quantified simultaneously using standard derivatization and multistage tandem mass spectrometric techniques. A linear ion trap mass spectrometer equipped with a vacuum matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization (vMALDI) source is used to perform MS~(2) as well as MS~(3) experiments.