Institute of Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Giessen, Friedrichstrasse 24, 35392, Giessen, Germany.
Glycoconj J. 2012 Apr;29(2-3):135-45. doi: 10.1007/s10719-012-9371-8. Epub 2012 Mar 10.
The free-living nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is a well-characterized eukaryotic model organism. Recent glycomic analyses of the glycosylation potential of this worm revealed an extremely high structural variability of its N-glycans. Moreover, the glycan patterns of each developmental stage appeared to be unique. In this study we have determined the N-glycan profiles of wild-type embryos in comparison to mutant embryos arresting embryogenesis early before differentiation and causing extensive transformations of cell identities, which allows to follow the diversification of N-glycans during development using mass spectrometry. As a striking feature, wild-type embryos obtained from liquid culture expressed a less heterogeneous oligosaccharide pattern than embryos recovered from agar plates. N-glycan profiles of mutant embryos displayed, in part, distinct differences in comparison to wild-type embryos suggesting alterations in oligosaccharide trimming and processing, which may be linked to specific cell fate alterations in the embryos.
自由生活的线虫秀丽隐杆线虫是一种特征明确的真核模式生物。最近对这种蠕虫糖基化潜力的糖组学分析显示，其 N-聚糖具有极高的结构变异性。此外，每个发育阶段的聚糖模式似乎都是独特的。在这项研究中，我们比较了野生型胚胎和在分化前早期胚胎停滞发育并导致细胞身份广泛转化的突变体胚胎的 N-聚糖图谱，这使得我们能够使用质谱法在发育过程中跟踪 N-聚糖的多样化。一个显著的特点是，从液体培养中获得的野生型胚胎表达的寡糖模式比从琼脂平板中回收的胚胎更为均匀。与野生型胚胎相比，突变体胚胎的 N-聚糖图谱显示出部分明显的差异，这表明在糖链修剪和加工方面发生了改变，这可能与胚胎中特定的细胞命运改变有关。
