Oligosaccharides and Glycan Separation via Capillary Electrophoresis Coupled with Mass Spectroscopy

After 2014, capillary electrophoresis (Fig. 1) has become an efficient method for carbohydrate evaluation. The methodology features a large resolution capable of distinguishing carbohydrates by the ratio of charge to scale. These primary features heavily focus on N-glycans, which seem to be extremely relevant for biological therapeutics and biomarker researches. Innovations in tools used during molecular or structural recognition of N-glycan involve time-indexing of migration and lectin profiling, also exoglycosidase along with mass spectrometry. Techniques of capillary electrophoresis have been formed that are able to separate glycans with the same sequence of simple sugars similar to other instruments but it can detect different positional isomers, and also specify whether alpha or beta is linked to monosaccharides comprising glycans. Based on the significant accomplishments of capillary electrophoresis to glycoscience from 2014 to the present, as addressed in this study, groundbreaking, evolving techniques in the field are highlighted and the potential direction of the technique is predicted. Fig. 1 Capillary electrophoresis working simple visual representation.