Detection of N-glycans on small amounts of glycoproteins in tissue samples and sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gels.

Abstract N-linked glycans harbored on glycoproteins profoundly affect the character of proteins by altering their structure or capacity to bind to other molecules. Specific knowledge of the role of N -glycans in these changes is limited due to difficulties in identifying precise carbohydrate structures on a given glycoprotein, which arises from the large amounts of glycoprotein required for N -glycan structural determination. Here, we refined a simple method to purify and detect trace amounts of N -glycans. During the N -glycan purification step, most contaminants were removed by two kinds of columns: a graphite carbon column and a cellulose column. N -Glycans were identified with a three-dimensional high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) system. Using our method, a global analysis of N -glycans from human muscle biopsy samples and mouse brain sections was possible. By combining sodium dodecyl sulfate–polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS–PAGE) with our method, we refined analytical procedures for N -glycans from SDS–PAGE gels using hydrazinolysis to achieve a high N -glycan recovery rate. N -Glycans on as little as 1 μg of the target protein transferrin or immunoglobulin G (IgG) were easily detected. These methods allowed us to efficiently determine glycoprotein N -glycans at picomole (pmol) levels.