FLUOROPHORE-ASSISTED CARBOHYDRATE ELECTROPHORESIS IN THE SEPARATION, ANALYSIS, AND SEQUENCING OF CARBOHYDRATES

Carbohydrate analysis has traditionally been viewed as a specialty sci ence, performed only in a few well-established laboratories using conv entional carbohydrate analysis technology (e.g., NMR, gas chromatograp hy-mass spectroscopy, high-performance liquid chromatography, capillar y electrophoresis) combined with the specialized technical training th at has been essential for accurate interpretation of the data. This tr adition of specialized laboratories is changing, due primarily to an i ncrease in the number of scientists performing routine carbohydrate an alysis. As a result, many scientists who are not trained in traditiona l carbohydrate analytical techniques now need to be able to perform ac curate carbohydrate analysis in their own laboratories. This has creat ed a need for technically simple and inexpensive methods of carbohydra te analysis. In this review, we present application vignettes of a tec hnically simple, yet analytically powerful method called fluorophore-a ssisted carbohydrate electrophoresis (FACE). FACE can be used for perf orming routine oligosaccharide profiling, monosaccharide analysis, and sequencing of a variety of carbohydrates.