Glycomic Profiling Through Capillary Electrophoresis and Microchip Capillary Electrophoresis

Recently, many biomedical research efforts have been focused on devising approaches that allow monitoring the subtle, yet biologically significant, glycosylation changes that correlate many afflictions. The ultimate goal of the present study is to aid in the diagnosis and treatment of various diseases as well as provide better understanding of the molecular attributes associated with these diseases. It has been noticed that capillary electrophoresis (CE) and microfluidics capillary electrophoresis (MCE) offers inherently high efficiencies and selectivity, allowing the effective resolution of numerous glycan isomers associated with glycoproteins, allowing the effective resolution of numerous glycan isomers associated with glycoproteins. Various capillary electromigration techniques, including capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE). capillary gel electrophoresis (CGE), micellar electrokinetic chromatography (MEKC), and capillary electrochromatography (CEC) have been applied to achieve the separation of different glycans. This study demonstrates for the first time the ability to attain CE-MS separation efficiency comparable to that commonly acquired through CE-LIF. This chapter primarily focuses the utility of different CE and MCE approaches to the structural characterization of glycoproteins and different means to interface these techniques to mass spectrometry are discussed comprehensively.