title: Applications of mass spectrometry to structural analysis of marine oligosaccharides.
abstract: Marine oligosaccharides have attracted increasing attention recently in developing potential drugs and biomaterials for their particular physical and chemical properties. However, the composition and sequence analysis of marine oligosaccharides are very challenging for their structural complexity and heterogeneity. Mass spectrometry (MS) has become an important technique for carbohydrate analysis by providing more detailed structural information, including molecular mass, sugar constituent, sequence, inter-residue linkage position and substitution pattern. This paper provides an overview of the structural analysis based on MS approaches in marine oligosaccharides, which are derived from some biologically important marine polysaccharides, including agaran, carrageenan, alginate, sulfated fucan, chitosan, glycosaminoglycan (GAG) and GAG-like polysaccharides. Applications of electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) are mainly presented and the general applications of matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry (MALDI-MS) are also outlined. Some technical challenges in the structural analysis of marine oligosaccharides by MS have also been pointed out.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Marine Drugs, Ministry of Education, School of Medicine and Pharmacy, Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266003, China. langyinzhi@163.com.
authors.forename: Yinzhi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Lang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Marine Drugs, Ministry of Education, School of Medicine and Pharmacy, Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266003, China. zhaoxia@ouc.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Xia
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Marine Drugs, Ministry of Education, School of Medicine and Pharmacy, Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266003, China. shelly0427@163.com.
authors.forename: Lili
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Marine Drugs, Ministry of Education, School of Medicine and Pharmacy, Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266003, China. glyu@ouc.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Guangli
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Yu
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003445:Crustacea; D005685:Galactans / Q000737:chemistry; D006025:Glycosaminoglycans / Q000737:chemistry; D009844:Oligosaccharides / Q000737:chemistry*; D000459:Phaeophyceae / Q000378:metabolism; D000461:Rhodophyta / Q000378:metabolism; D021241:Spectrometry, Mass, Electrospray Ionization / Q000379:methods*; D019032:Spectrometry, Mass, Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption-Ionization / Q000379:methods*
chemical_list: D005685:Galactans; D006025:Glycosaminoglycans; D009844:Oligosaccharides