Glycan Node Analysis: A Bottom-up Approach to Glycomics

The overall goal of this procedure is to break down all glycans in a biological sample while conserving monosaccharide composition and linkage information. Facilitating distillation of interesting glycan features such as sick cyalalation and bisecting N-Acetylglucosamine into single analytical signals. This method can help to directly answer key questions in the field of glycomites such as which unique glycan features are altered in particular disease states.

The main advantage of this technique is that glycan features that tend to be altered in disease such as, beta 1-6 branching and corfulcosulation are distilled into single analytical signals rather than being spread across multiple intact glycans. Generally, individuals need to do this method really struggle with poor yeilds of N-Acetylcysteines due to improper processing of freshly permethylated glycans. Prep the samples, by first transferring nine micro-liters of each biological analyte into separate 1.5 milliliter test tubes.