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Mechanistic study on the sulfate migration in glycosaminoglycans during MS fragmentation

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TOC2

Polewski, L.; Yaman, M.; Tokić, M.; Marianski, M.* & Pagel, K.* – 2026

Glycosaminoglycans use positional sulfation to encode binding specificity onto its sequence. Understanding these sulfation patterns constitute a major challenge. Previous studies hinted that sulfate groups can migrate along glycans during collision-induced dissociation in mass spectrometry (MS) experiments, forming isomeric fragments that can lead to incorrect structural assignments. We use ion-mobility – mass spectrometry to investigate the mechanism of this phenomenon in heparin sulfate disaccharides. The sulfate group migrates from the non-reducing to reducing end of the sugar, and the degree of migration does not depend on the structure of the label. The migration product has a sulfate group attached to either 6O- or 3O-position of GlcNAc, and the migration mechanism consists of multiple steps, with the sulfate group first shifting from the iduronic acid to the 6O-position of GlcNAc, and next to the 3O-position. The presented data offer insight into the complexity and unpredictability of sulfated sugar fragmentation in tandem MS and extensive investigations is required to determine whether this represents a singular case or a general phenomenon characteristic of deprotonated sulfated glycans.

Title
Mechanistic study on the sulfate migration in glycosaminoglycans during MS fragmentation
Author
Polewski, L.; Yaman, M.; Tokić, M.; Marianski, M.* & Pagel, K.*
Date
2026-02
Citation
Commun. Chem., 2026, DOI: 10.1038/s42004-026-01939-2
Type
Text
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