A general method for the complete deglycosylation of a wide variety of serum glycoproteins using peptide-N-glycosidase-F

Abstract

Many indirect serum studies show changes in protein glycosylation in disease, but further progress will require direct investigation of oligosaccharide composition. Current methods of deglycosylation using PNGase-F often result in incomplete removal of oligosaccharides. This is an unsatisfactory situation because only small quantities of material are often available in clinical studies, glycosylation changes may occur in only a small proportion of the molecules and quantification of the released oligosaccharides may be unreliable. The ability of PNGase-F to deglycosylate haptoglobin (Hp) under different conditions has been investigated. Oligosaccharides were completely removed from 50μg of Hp by treatment for 24 h with PNGase-F in 50 mmol/l ammonium formate buffer, pH 8.6, in combination with sodium dodecyl sulphate, mercaptoethanol and Nonidet P40. This modified procedure was equally effective at removing oligosaccharides from other serum glycoproteins (α1 glycoprotein, α1, transferrin) and fetuin, and its efficiency was independent of the polymeric structure of the molecule or the amount of glycosylation. The method has the additional advantage of using 20% less enzyme than previous methods, which substantially reduces costs.