新型核壳型亲水聚合物-硅胶杂化填料的合成及其在蛋白质N-糖链富集中的应用

蛋白质的N-糖基化修饰与多种重要的生理、病理进程密切相关,是多种重大疾病诊断标志物研究的热点。由于糖蛋白本身多是低丰度表达的蛋白质,且糖链结构具有高度微不均一性,这使得蛋白质糖基化修饰的分析具有一定的挑战。本研究利用表面引发-原子转移自由基聚合(SI-ATRP)法,以带有双键的氨基葡萄糖为单体(GMAG),成功制备了新型核壳型亲水聚合物-硅胶杂化填料(pGMAG-SiO₂)。由于在硅胶表面引入致密的亲水聚合物层,该填料不仅保持了硅胶良好的机械强度,而且显著提高了其亲水性,因此非常适合作为亲水填料用于蛋白质的N-糖链富集。以麦芽七糖和鸡卵清蛋白的N-糖链为研究对象,考察了该填料对N-糖链的富集效果,并将该杂化填料成功用于人血浆中糖蛋白N-糖链的富集检测,共鉴定了47种糖型。以上结果表明,pGMAG-SiO₂填料对N-糖链具有较高的亲和性,可以用于N-糖链的高覆盖率鉴定。

Synthesis of core-shell hydrophilic polymer-silica hybrid material and its application in N-glycan enrichment

Protein N-glycosylation is one of the most important post-translational modifications closely correlated with many important biological and pathological processes. The structural alterations of N-linked glycans in glycoproteins are always associated with many diseases, such as diabetes, heart failure and malignant tumors. Therefore, it is very important to establish sensitive methods for high-throughput N-glycan profiling. However, the low abundance of the N-glycoproteins and the heterogeneity of the N-glycans make it a challenge to analyse the protein glycosylation sensitively. In this work, we had synthesized core-shell hydrophilic polymer-silica hybrid materials (pGMAG-SiO₂) for the efficient enrichment of protein N-glycans. Firstly, pGMAG-SiO₂ was prepared by in situ growth of glucose polymer on the surface of silica microparticles using surface-initiated atom transfer radical polymerization (SI-ATRP) technique. The strong hydrophilicity of the material makes it suitable for the enrichment of N-glycans released from complex samples. Secondly, maltoheptaose and the N-glycans from chicken egg albumin were used as standard samples to optimize the enrichment conditions and evaluate the enrichment efficiency of pGMAG-SiO₂. Finally, pGMAG-SiO₂ was applied to the enrichment of N-linked glycans from human plasma proteins and 47 glycoforms were successfully identified after enrichment. These results demonstrated the high enrichment efficiency and significant application value of pGMAG-SiO₂ in the analysis of N-glycans.