A new approach to the structural determination of glycoproteins and polysaccharides: anhydrous HF solvolysis.

From experiments with glycoproteins containing the glycopeptide linkages, arabinose-O-hydroxyproline and galactose-O-serine (plant cell wall glycopeptides), N-acetylgalactosamine-O-serine/threonine (pig submaxillary mucin), and N-acetyl-glucosamine-N-asparagine (fetuin), it is apparent that anhydrous liquid HF, a reagent commonly used by snythetic peptide chemists for the complete removal of protecting groups from synthetic peptides, cleaves the O-glycosidic linkages of neutral sugars in 1 hr at 0 degrees C, and the O-glycosidic linkages of amino sugars in 3 hr at 23 degrees C. The N-glycosidic linkage of N-acetylglucosamine to asparagine is not cleaved under any conditions that have been tested. Sodium dodecyl sulfate gel electrophoresis of bovine serum albumin treated in HF does not show any degradation of peptide bonds. Some relatively stable enzymes (lysozyme and RNase) have been shown by others to retain most of their enzymic activity after short treatment (1 hr at 0 degrees C) in HF. With the specificity of HF at 0 degrees C for neutral sugars it should be possible to generate di- or trisaccharides in high yield from polysaccharides containing both neutral and amino sugars with neutral sugars as the reducing termini.