title: Mass spectrometric comparison of N-glycan profiles from Caenorhabditis elegans mutant embryos.
abstract: The free-living nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is a well-characterized eukaryotic model organism. Recent glycomic analyses of the glycosylation potential of this worm revealed an extremely high structural variability of its N-glycans. Moreover, the glycan patterns of each developmental stage appeared to be unique. In this study we have determined the N-glycan profiles of wild-type embryos in comparison to mutant embryos arresting embryogenesis early before differentiation and causing extensive transformations of cell identities, which allows to follow the diversification of N-glycans during development using mass spectrometry. As a striking feature, wild-type embryos obtained from liquid culture expressed a less heterogeneous oligosaccharide pattern than embryos recovered from agar plates. N-glycan profiles of mutant embryos displayed, in part, distinct differences in comparison to wild-type embryos suggesting alterations in oligosaccharide trimming and processing, which may be linked to specific cell fate alterations in the embryos.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Giessen, Friedrichstrasse 24, 35392, Giessen, Germany.
authors.forename: Hildegard
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Geyer
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Schmidt
authors.forename: Matthias
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Müller
authors.forename: Ralf
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Schnabel
authors.forename: Rudolf
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Geyer
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D017173:Caenorhabditis elegans / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000196:embryology* / Q000235:genetics; D002240:Carbohydrate Sequence; D002454:Cell Differentiation / Q000502:physiology; D004625:Embryo, Nonmammalian / Q000737:chemistry*; D018507:Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental; D054794:Glycomics / Q000379:methods*; D006031:Glycosylation; D009154:Mutation; D011134:Polysaccharides / Q000096:biosynthesis / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D019032:Spectrometry, Mass, Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption-Ionization
chemical_list: D011134:Polysaccharides