Introduction of a new scale into reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography of pyridylamino sugar chains for structural assignment.

Addition of a monosaccharide residue to a pyridylaminated (PA)-N-linked sugar chain results in an increment or decrement in the elution time on reversed-phase HPLC, the difference being defined as the partial elution time of the residue. Based on this principle, an empirical rule was deduced, which states that the elution time is roughly equal to the sum of the partial elution times of the component sugar residues [Anal. Biochem., 167 (1987) 321-326]. In practice, however, some partial elution times obtained from different pairs of mother PA-sugar chains are found to deviate, and consequently the closeness of the elution times of PA-sugar chains calculated therefrom to the observed times is reduced in such cases. To improve the reliability of the additivity rule and to generalize elution times so that they are less dependent on minor alterations in the elution conditions, we have devised a new scale for elution time, which we have named a reversed-phase scale. The elution times on the reversed-phase scale (the R values) are read from a conversion curve constructed using the elution times of eight selected standard PA-sugar chains. The partial elution times on the reversed-phase scale of 22 monosaccharide residues were calculated from the R values of 93 PA-sugar chains. The R values obtained by summing the partial elution times of all the component monosaccharide residues became much closer to the R values obtained from the reversed-phase scale, compared to the results obtained using the previous method. In addition, the R values were less influenced by minor change in the elution conditions. These features of the new scale allow more accurate structural assignment of sugar chains.