Analysis of oligosaccharide structures from the reducing end terminal by combining partial acid hydrolysis and a two-dimensional sugar map

A new sensitive and convenient method for the structural analysis of oligos accharides was developed, in which partial acid hydrolysis was combined wit h two-dimensional sugar mapping of pyridylamino (PA)oligosaccharides. A PA- oligosaccharide was partially hydrolyzed, the acid hydrolysis conditions be ing optimized so as to obtain various PA-oligosaccharide fragments with hig h yields ii om different types of PA-oligosaccharides. The acid hydrolyzate s were then fractionated every 1 glucose unit by size-fractionation HPLC, a nd each fraction was analyzed by reversed-phase HPLC. The structure of each PA-oligosaccharide fragment was identified on a two-dimensional sugar map prepared with standard PA-sugar chains, after which the original PA-oligosa ccharide was reconstructed from the reducing end terminal based on the obta ined structures of the PA-oligosaccharide fragments. The method was success fully applied to resolving the structure of an N-linked sugar chain. (C) 19 98 Academic Press.