IDENTIFICATION AND DIFFERENTIATION OF UNDERIVATIZED DIASTEROMERIC

Abstract

Sugars are important molecules with remarkable cell signals pathway functions in higher organisms. The structural complexity of sugar represented by its isomeric, anomeric and diasteromeric configurations deserve the implementation of modern, rapid and sensitive methodologies for its identification and differentiation. Mass spectrometry and its analyzer of ion trap provide new alternative techniques that encourage the control of the fragmentation energies supplied to molecules. Since stereoisomer differentiation is consider outside the mass spectrometry domain, a methodology has been applied in order to differentiate β-D-galactose, β-D-glucose and the disaccharides β-D-galactopyranosyl-(1→4)-β-D-glucopyranoside (lactose), α-D-glucopyranosyl-(1→4)-β-D-glucopyranoside (maltose) y β-D-fructofuranosyl-(2↔1)-α- D-glucopyranoside (sacarose) trough its ammonium and lithium adducts by infusion on ESI-IT-MS/MS mass spectrometer. Different fragmentation energies have been used to ensure the ion marker occurrence in the analyte stereochemistry. It is evident that the collision energies control in structural analysis of molecules provides a powerful and modern analytical tool to be applied in control laboratories.

Keywords

• electrospray
• ion trap analyzer
• monosaccharides
• disaccharides
• diasteromers
• tandem mass