title: Analysis of heparan sulfate oligosaccharides by nano-electrospray ionization mass spectrometry.
abstract: A highly sensitive method to identify and quantify heparan sulfate (HS) oligosaccharides by using nano-electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (nESI-MS) is described. The new approach allows us to detect approximately 50 nM of a chemically synthesized pentasaccharide with a structure of GlcNS6S-GlcA-GlcNS6S-IdoA2S-GlcNS6SOMe (3-OH pentasaccharide). Typically, solutions were infused for a total of 5 min, at an average flow rate of 30 nl/min, and the remaining sample was recovered from the nanovial. The spectra shown were obtained by summing scans for 1--3 min. Hence, our data indicated that as little as 3 x 10(-15) mole of the pentasaccharide was consumed to obtain a reasonable spectrum at the concentration as low as 50 nM. In addition, we found a linear relationship between the relative response of the molecular ion and the concentration of the analyzed 3-OH pentasaccharide, demonstrating that this approach can be used to determine the amount of HS oligosaccharides. To this end, a 3-O-sulfated pentasaccharide was prepared by incubating the 3-OH pentasaccharide with purified HS 3-O-sulfotransferase-1 and 3'-phosphoadenosine-5'-phospho[(35)S]sulfate. The resulting 3-O-sulfated pentasaccharide was purified and analyzed by nESI-MS. Based on the standard curve constructed with the 3-OH pentasaccharide, we calculated the concentration of the 3-O-sulfated pentasaccharide by the relative response. The result indicates that this value is very close to the value measured by [(35)S]sulfate radioactivity. In conclusion, nESI-MS provides both high sensitivity and the capacity to quantify HSs. This approach is likely to become a very important tool for structural analysis and sequencing of HS and heparin oligosaccharides.
authors.affiliation: Mass Spectrometry Facility, Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA.
authors.forename: R M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Pope
authors.forename: C S
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Raska
authors.forename: S C
authors.initials: SC
authors.lastname: Thorp
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Liu
mesh_terms: D002240:Carbohydrate Sequence; D006497:Heparan Sulfate / Q000737:chemistry*; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009844:Oligosaccharides / Q000737:chemistry*; D021241:Spectrometry, Mass, Electrospray Ionization
chemical_list: D006497:Heparan Sulfate; D009844:Oligosaccharides