One-step synthesis of high-hydrophilic hydrothermal spheres for N-glycosylated peptides and exosomes analysis in diabetes serum

Clarifying the pathogenesis of diabetes contributes to prevent the occurrence of diabetes. Glycosylated proteins carried by serum exosomes are possibly used as biomarkers of some diseases. In this work, a novel hydrophilic carbonaceous sphere was prepared via one-step hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) process by using glucose as raw material, 1,2-epoxy-5-hexene as a linker, 2-aminopurine as hydrophilic functional group, water as the sole solvent (denoted as CS@2AP). The synthesis process was simple and eco-friendly. The obtained CS@2AP proposed high sensitivity (0.08 fmol μL⁻¹) and excellent selectivity (1:1000) for glycopeptides enrichment. Moreover, CS@2AP displayed good isolation effect for serum exosomes from diabetes patient analyzed by western blot. Furthermore, when CS@2AP was used for glycopeptides analysis from exosome digests, 68 glycopeptides were specifically captured.