Screening and identification of acidic carbohydrates in bovine colostrum by using ion/molecule reactions and Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry: specificity toward phosphorylated complexes.

A screening method was developed for the identification of acidic saccharides from biological mixtures utilizing gas-phase derivatization and mass spectrometry. Phosphorylated compounds were differentiated from other acidic species by exploiting the selective reactivity of chlorotrimethylsilane with the phosphate ions (phosphorylated compounds shift by 72 Da, allowing rapid compound detection). A 13-component mock mixture was used to demonstrate the viability of the method, and a detection limit of 600 nM (30 fmol) was determined. This method was applied to the identification of acidic compounds from bovine colostrum. To further verify the selectivity of the ion/molecule reaction, exact mass measurements were used to determine the elemental composition of 14 compounds. Eight novel acidic carbohydrate species were observed in bovine colostrum, six of which have never been reported previously in milks. Tandem mass spectrometric experiments allowed compound characterization for two of these components.