Selective and accurate quantification of N-acetylglucosamine in biotechnological cell samples via GC-MS/MS and GC-TOFMS

N-Acetylglucosamine is a key component of bacterial and fungal cell wall and of the extracellular matrix of animal cells. It plays a variety of roles at the cell surface structure and is under discussion to be involved in signaling pathways. The presence of a number of N-acetylhexosamine stereoisomers in samples of biological or biotechnological origin demands for dedicated high efficiency separation methods, due to identical exact mass and similar fragmentation patterns of the stereoisomers. Gas chromatography offers high sample capacity, separation efficiency and precision under repeatability conditions of measurement, which is a necessity for the analysis of low abundant stereoisomers in biological samples. Automated on-line derivatization facilitates to overcome the main obstacle for the use of gas chromatography in metabolomics, namely the derivatization of polar metabolites prior to analysis. Using alkoximation and subsequent trimethylsilylation, carbohydrates and their derivatives are known to show...