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Updated: Feb 11, 2026

Profiling of Permethylated Mucin O-glycans Using Matrix-assisted Laser Desorption/Ionization Time-of-flight Mass Spectrometry
Published on: June 20, 2025
Fucose Migration in Intact Protonated Glycan Ions: A Universal Phenomenon in Mass Spectrometry
Eike Mucha1,2, Maike Lettow1,2, Mateusz Marianski1
1Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Faradayweg 4-6, 14195, Berlin, Germany.
Abstract:
Fucose is an essential deoxysugar that is found in a wide range of biologically relevant glycans and glycoconjugates. A recurring problem in mass spectrometric analyses of fucosylated glycans is the intramolecular migration of fucose units, which can lead to erroneous sequence assignments. This migration reaction is typically assigned to activation during collision-induced dissociation (CID) in tandem mass spectrometry (MS). In this work, we utilized cold-ion spectroscopy and show for the first time that fucose migration is not limited to fragments obtained in tandem MS and can also be observed in intact glycan ions. This observation suggests a possible low-energy barrier for this transfer reaction and generalizes fucose migration to an issue that may universally occur in any type of mass spectrometry experiment.
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