Designed synthesis of carbon-functional magnetic graphene mesoporous silica materials using polydopamine as carbon precursor for the selective enrichment of N-linked glycan

Abstract

Glycosylation, which has been confirmed to be associated with many diseases, is an important protein post-translation modification. Taking into account the low abundant of glycan, the purification of complex biological samples is considered to be very significant before mass spectrometry detection. In this work, carbon-functionalized magnetic graphene /mesoporous silica materials (C-Mag G@mSiO2 materials) with high content of carbon were designed and synthesized by using polydopamine as carbon precursor. Taking advantage of the special interaction between carbon and glycan, C-Mag G@mSiO2 materials were successfully applied to enrich N-linked glycans in different complex samples, such as standard glycoprotein digestion, the mixture of standard glycoprotein digestion, glycoprotein and non-glycoprotein, and human serum.

Keywords: Graphene; Mass spectrometry; N-linked glycan; Polydopamine; Selective enrichment.