RECENT PROGRESS IN HIGH-PERFORMANCE ANION-EXCHANGE CHROMATOGRAPHY THERMOSPRAY MASS-SPECTROMETRY OF OLIGOSACCHARIDES

The on-line combination of high-performance anion-exchange chromatography and mass spectrometry via a thermospray interface has proved to be a powerful tool in the characterization of sugar oligomers obtained by enzymatic digestion of plant cell wall polysaccharides. The potential of the method can be improved by the use of a new column material, CarboPac PA100, which requires lower sodium acetate concentrations for the elution of large sugar oligomers. Further, the application of multiple-ion detection optimizes the information obtained from the analysis by improving both the signal-to-noise ratio and the conservation of the chromatographic resolution. Negative-ion instead of positive-ion detection results in significantly better signals, especially for the larger sugar oligomers.