Review Article
Adrian Robu, Loredana Lupu,
Abstract
During the past several years, applications of Mass Spectrometry (MS) in the biomedical research increased considerably. While MS is for many years heavily used in proteomics, for protein identification and quantification as well as for biomarker discovery, for a long time its applications in glycomics were limited, mainly because of the challenging conditions required for the ionization and detection of most carbohydrate classes. However, due to the development of high performance analytical instrumentation, MS in particular with Electrospray (ESI) and Matrix Assisted Laser Desorption/Ionization (MALDI) started to be intensively applied also to the analysis of post-translational modifications such as glycosylation, acetylation or phosphorylation. Focus on MS-based glycosylation is, however, scarce. Therefore, analysis of glycoproteins in particular diseases through glycoscreening and sequencing is another new MS-based avenue, yet to be pursued. In this context, we discuss briefly here the recent advances of MS in glycomics and glycoscreening and their applications in biomedical research, with a particular emphasis on cancer, lysosomal storage and bacterial diseases.