Mass spectrometry is the primary analytical technique used to characterize the complex oligosaccharides that decorate cell surfaces. Monosaccharide building blocks are often simple epimers, which when combined produce diastereomeric glycoconjugates indistinguishable by mass spectrometry. Structure elucidation frequently relies on assumptions that biosynthetic pathways are highly conserved. Here, we show that biosynthetic enzymes can display unexpected promiscuity, with human glycosyltransferase pp-α-GanT2 able to utilize both uridine diphosphate N-acetylglucosamine and uridine diphosphate N-acetylgalactosamine, leading to the synthesis of epimeric glycopeptides in vitro. Ion-mobility mass spectrometry (IM-MS) was used to separate these structures and, significantly, enabled characterization of the attached glycan based on the drift times of the monosaccharide product ions generated following collision-induced dissociation. Finally, ion-mobility mass spectrometry following fragmentation was used to determine the nature of both the reducing and non-reducing glycans of a series of epimeric disaccharides and the branched pentasaccharide Man3 glycan, demonstrating that this technique may prove useful for the sequencing of complex oligosaccharides.

SummaryThe synthesis of a number of aminoethyl glycosides of cell-surface carbohydrates, which are important intermediates for glycoarray synthesis, is described. A set of protocols was developed which provide these intermediates, in a short number of steps, from commercially available starting materials.

A fluoro-tagged N-acetylglucosamine-capped glycolipid that can form lipid microdomains in fluid phospholipid bilayers has been shown to be enzymatically galactosylated by bovine β(1,4)-galactosyltransferase. MALDI MS, HPLC, and LC-MS revealed that the rate of enzymatic transformation was significantly enhanced by lipid clustering; at a 1% mol/mol loading, clustered glycolipids were galactosylated 9-fold faster than glycolipids dispersed across the bilayer surface. The transformation of the GlcNAc "glycocalyx" into a Gal(β1-4)GlcNAc "glycocalyx" relabeled these vesicles, making them susceptible to agglutination by Erythrina cristagalli lectin (ECL). The kinetic parameters for this transformation revealed a lower apparent Km when the substrate lipids were clustered, which is attributed to multivalent binding to an extended substrate cleft around the active site. These observations may have important implications where soluble enzymes act on substrates embedded within cellular lipid rafts.

O-mannosyl glycans are known to play an important role in regulating the function of α-dystroglycan (α-DG), as defective glycosylation is associated with various phenotypes of congenital muscular dystrophy. Despite the well-established biological significance of these glycans, questions regarding their precise molecular function remain unanswered. Further biological investigation will require synthetic methods for the generation of pure samples of homogeneous glycopeptides with diverse sequences. Here we describe the first total syntheses of glycopeptides containing the tetrasaccharide NeuNAcα2-3Galβ1-4GlcNAcβ1-2Manα, which is reported to be the most abundant O-mannosyl glycan on α-DG. Our approach is based on biomimetic stepwise assembly from the reducing end and also gives access to the naturally occurring mono-, di-, and trisaccharide substructures. In addition to the total synthesis, we have developed a "one-pot" enzymatic cascade leading to the rapid synthesis of the target tetrasaccharide. Finally, solid-phase synthesis of the desired glycopeptides directly on a gold microarray platform is described.

We report a highly efficient and selective method for the coupling of peptides and glycoconjugates bearing N-terminal cysteines to activated surfaces. This chemoselective method generates stable amide linkages without using any thiol additives.