Effective Enrichment Strategy Using Boronic Acid-Functionalized Mesoporous Graphene-Silica Composites for Intact N- and O-Linked Glycopeptide Analysis in Human Serum

The heterogeneity and low abundance of protein glycosylation present challenging barriers to the analysis of intact glycopeptides, which is key to comprehensively understanding the role of glycosylation in an organism. Efficient and specific enrichment of intact glycopeptides could help greatly with this problem. Here, we propose a new enrichment strategy using a boronic acid (BA)-functionalized mesoporous graphene-silica composite (denoted as GO@mSiO(2)-GLYMO-APB) for isolating intact glycopeptides from complex biological samples. The merits of this composite, including high surface area and synergistic effect from size exclusion functionality of mesoporous material, hydrophilic interaction of silica, and the reversible covalent binding with BA, enable the effective and specific enrichment of both intact N- and O-glycopeptides. The results from the enrichment performance of the strategy evaluated by standard glycoproteins and the application to global N- and O-glycosylation analyses in human serum indicate the robustness and potential of the strategy for intact glycopeptide analysis.

Automated summary

A new enrichment strategy using a boronic acid-functionalized mesoporous graphene-silica composite is proposed for isolating intact glycopeptides, showing effectiveness and specificity in glycosylation analysis.