Advances in structure elucidation of low molecular weight carbohydrates by liquid chromatography-multiple-stage mass spectrometry analysis

Abstract Oligosaccharides are gaining importance because of their beneficial properties in human health. They normally appear in natural and synthetic products as complex mixtures of different monomeric units, glycosidic linkages and degrees of polymerization (DP), being disaccharides and trisaccharides usually the most abundant ones. Although liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry is a useful technique for oligosaccharides analysis, the similarity of their structures makes difficult their characterization. Moreover, there is still scarce information about the relationship between carbohydrates chemical structure, mass spectra and chromatographic data. Then, in this work, chromatographic parameters for 23 disaccharides with different linkages and monomeric units (glucose, galactose, mannose and fructose) were determined using porous graphitized and hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography columns. Moreover, diagnostic ions of these disaccharides obtained by tandem mass spectra (MS2) were established by stepwise linear discriminant analysis. The relationship between carbohydrate chemical structure and their chromatographic retention data and characteristic ions obtained by multiple-stage mass spectrometry (MSn) was successful in establishing some specific criteria that allowed the characterization of trisaccharides with different structural features.