Biomimetic polymer material for glycopeptide high selective enrichment

: The study of protein glycosylation is important to deepening the current understanding of its biological functions as well as to elucidate novel biomarkers of glycosylation. However, glycopeptides must be enriched prior to analysis due to their naturally low abundance. In this study, tryptophan functionalized polymer materials (denoted as Poly-Trp) were synthesized to serve as a novel biomimetic polymers. The resulting materials were characterized by various methods including scanning electron microscopy, thermal analysis, and infrared spectrometry, validating the successful synthesis of Poly-Trp. The retention of glycopeptides on Poly-Trp was investigated revealing that the retention ability decreased as the acetonitrile content of the mobile phase decreased and its acidity increased. Poly-Trp exhibited higher enrichment selectivity for glycopeptides from bovine fetuin than the commercial material ZIC-HILIC, and aminated silica which could defect the interference of 100-fold amount of substance ratios of bovine serum albumin. Poly-Trp is expected to have further applications in the purification of biological samples for the study of glycosylation.