Glycomics and Mass Spectrometry

Abstract

There is an increasing body of evidence indicating that glycans are implicated in numerous bio- logical processes such as cell–cell interactions, intracellular signaling, and immune response. Glycomics emerges from the necessity to understand the mechanisms underlying the inter- actions responsible for these activities. The term glycomics is used to describe experimental approaches to studying the structure and function of the glycomes of fluids, cells, tissues, organs etc. Glycomics embraces a variety of technologies amongst which mass spectrometry (MS) plays a pivotal role because it is themethod of choice for defining the primary structures of glycopolymers. This chapter provides an insight into MS-based structural strategies that are best suited to studying complex glycomes.