One-pot synthesis of magnetic colloidal nanocrystal clusters coated with chitosan for selective enrichment of glycopeptides

Selective enrichment of glycopeptides prior to the mass spectrometry (MS) analysis is essential due to ion suppression effect during ionization caused by the co-presence of non-glycosylated peptides. Among the enrichment approaches, hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography (HILIC) based on magnetic separation has become a popular method in recent years. As the conventional synthesis procedures of these materials are tedious and time-consuming with at least four steps. Herein, magnetic colloidal nanocrystal clusters coated with chitosan (Fe₃O₄@CS MCNCs) have been successfully prepared by a simple one-pot method. The resulting Fe₃O₄@CS MCNCs demonstrated an excellent ability for glycopeptide enrichment with high selectivity, low detection limit and high binding capacity. Furthermore, in the analysis of real complicated biological sample, 283 unique N-glycosylation sites corresponding to 175 glycosylated proteins were identified in three replicate analyses of 45 μg protein sample extracted from HeLa cells, indicating the great potential in detection and identification of low abundant glycopeptides in glycoproteome analysis.