Mass spectrometry for the characterization of unsulfated chondroitin oligosaccharides from 2-mers to 16-mers. Comparison with hyaluronic acid oligomers.

This study reports for the first time the complete liquid chromatography/electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (LC/ESI-MS) and tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) analyses performed in negative ion mode of saturated unsulfated chondroitin oligosaccharides up to 16-mers and comparison with hyaluronic acid (HA) oligomers differing only in the nature of the hexosamine residue. MS/MS of the chondroitin disaccharide on the singly charged precursor at m/z 396.1 afforded a glycosidic cleavage C1 product ion at m/z 192.9. In the tetrasaccharide, C2 (m/z 396.0) and C3 (m/z 572.0) product anions were generated by glycosidic cleavage. A C5 [M-2H]2- product ion at m/z 475.1 was generated by the glycosidic cleavage of the hexasaccharide, and a C7 ion (m/z 664.6, charge state of -2) was produced from the octasaccharide. The same fragmentation pattern of deprotonated oligomers was observed for the largest oligosaccharides, from 10- to 16-mers. There has been no previous report of MS/MS spectra for unsulfated chondroitin oligomers of these sizes. Unsulfated saturated chondroitin oligosaccharides with x-mer units and larger than a tetrasaccharide dissociate to almost exclusively form CX-1-type ions. Saturated HA oligomers also afforded the same fragmentation pattern as deprotonated oligomers by ESI-MS and MS/MS analyses. Thus, under the experimental conditions used in the current study, we were unable to distinguish between unsulfated chondroitin and HA.