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Updated: Jul 25, 2026

OLIgo Mass Profiling (OLIMP) of Extracellular Polysaccharides
Published on: June 21, 2010
Mass spectrometry of oligosaccharides
1Department of Biochemistry, Boston University School of Medicine, 715 Albany St., R-806, Boston, Massachusetts 02118, USA. jzaia@bu.edu
Abstract:
Glycosylation is a common post-translational modification to cell surface and extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins as well as to lipids. As a result, cells carry a dense coat of carbohydrates on their surfaces that mediates a wide variety of cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions that are crucial to development and function. Because of the historical difficulties with the analysis of complex carbohydrate structures, a detailed understanding of their roles in biology has been slow to develop. Just as mass spectrometry has proven to be the core technology behind proteomics, it stands to play a similar role in the study of functional implications of carbohydrate expression, known as glycomics. This review summarizes the state of knowledge for the mass spectrometric analysis of oligosaccharides with regard to neutral, sialylated, and sulfated compound classes. Mass spectrometric techniques for the ionization and fragmentation of oligosaccharides are discussed so as to give the reader the background to make informed decisions to solve structure-activity relations in glycomics.
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