Fragmentation Characteristics of Deprotonated N-linked Glycopeptides: Influences of Amino Acid Composition and Sequence

Glycopeptide structural analysis using tandem mass spectrometry is becoming a common approach for elucidating site-specific N -glycosylation. The analysis is generally performed in positive-ion mode. Therefore, fragmentation of protonated glycopeptides has been extensively investigated; however, few studies are available on deprotonated glycopeptides, despite the usefulness of negative-ion mode analysis in detecting glycopeptide signals. Here, large sets of glycopeptides derived from well-characterized glycoproteins were investigated to understand the fragmentation behavior of deprotonated N -linked glycopeptides under low-energy collision-induced dissociation (CID) conditions. The fragment ion species were found to be significantly variable depending on their amino acid sequence and could be classified into three types: (i) glycan fragment ions, (ii) glycan-lost fragment ions and their secondary cleavage products, and (iii) fragment ions with intact glycan moiety. The CID spectra of glycopeptides having a short peptide sequence were dominated by type (i) glycan fragments (e.g., 2,4 A R , 2,4 A R-1 , D, and E ions). These fragments define detailed structural features of the glycan moiety such as branching. For glycopeptides with medium or long peptide sequences, the major fragments were type (ii) ions (e.g., [peptide + 0,2 X 0 –H] – and [peptide–NH 3 –H] – ). The appearance of type (iii) ions strongly depended on the peptide sequence, and especially on the presence of Asp, Asn, and Glu. When a glycosylated Asn is located on the C-terminus, an interesting fragment having an Asn residue with intact glycan moiety, [glycan + Asn–36] – , was abundantly formed. Observed fragments are reasonably explained by a combination of existing fragmentation rules suggested for N -glycans and peptides. Figure ᅟ