Do rodent and human brains have different N-glycosylation patterns?

A large number of studies on the structure of N-glycosidically linked oligosaccharides from glycoproteins of different organs and/or different species have been carried out in the past using various combinations of techniques such as monosaccharide analysis, permethylation, peracteylation, exoglycosidase sequencing, normal and reversed phase HPLC, mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Although it is widely accepted that the processing of N-glycans in the ER and Golgi of mammalian cells follows the same principal metabolic rules, analyses have revealed that the glycosylation pattern of a particular protein may differ depending on the cell type in which it is expressed. N-glycans from brain glycoproteins have been shown to include a variety of hybrid- and complex-type structures with structural features that are not so commonly found on glycoproteins from other organs and which have, therefore, been classified as 'brain-specific'. Comparison of the N-glycans of glycoproteins from homogenates of rat, mouse and human brains confirm that, in general, glycoproteins from human brain show a similar profile of brain-specific N-glycans as glycoproteins from mouse and rat brain.