Glycosphingolipids have many cellular functions such as cell-cell recognition, cell growth and signal transduction. Mass spectrometry is an indispensable tool for the structural characterization of glycosphingolipids, because it can provide information on molecular weight of glycosphingolipids, carbohydrate species and carbohydrate sequence of oligosaccharide moieties of glycosphingolipids. Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) is an important and widely used ionization method for the mass spectral analysis of biomolecules. Recently, QIT-TOF (quadrupole ion trap time-of-flight) mass spectrometry, which enables to perform CID-MS~n analysis, was developed for the fine structural characterization of organic compounds. The QIT-TOF mass spectrometry with a commercially available MALDI atmospheric pressure ion source has been applied to the structural characterization of pyridylaminated (PA) oligosaccharides derived from glycosphingolipids. We also report on the structural characterization of peptides by AP-MALDI-QIT-TOF mass spectrometry which can provide MSn mass spectra with polarity switching MSn method
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