High-throughput and high-sensitivity mass spectrometry-based N-glycomics of mammalian cells

Abstract

The current protocols for glycomic analysis of cells often require a large quantity of material (5–20 million cells). In order to analyze the N-glycosylation from small amounts of cells (≤1 million) as obtained from, for example, primary cell lines or cell sorting, and in a higher throughput approach, we set up a robust 96-well format PVDF-membrane based N -glycan release protocol followed by linkage-specific sialic acid stabilization, cleanup, and MALDI-TOF-MS analysis. We further evaluated the infl uence of PNGase F incubation time on the N-glycan profile.