Effective Assignment of α2,3/α2,6-Sialic Acid Isomers by LC-MS/MS-Based Glycoproteomics.

Distinct structural changes of the α2,3/α2,6-sialic acid glycosidic linkages on glycoproteins are of importance in cancer biology, inflammatory diseases, and virus tropism. Current glycoproteomic methodologies are, however, not amenable toward high-throughput characterization of sialic acid isomers. To enable such assignments, a mass spectrometry method utilizing synthetic model glycopeptides for the analysis of oxonium ion intensity ratios was developed. This method was successfully applied in large-scale glycoproteomics, thus allowing the site-specific structural characterization of sialic acid isomers.