Characteristic fragmentation patterns of the trimethylsilyl and trimethylsilyl-oxime derivatives of various saccharides as obtained by gas chromatography coupled to ion-trap mass spectrometry.

The fragmentation patterns of selected glycosidic linkage containing non-reducing (methylmannoside, methylgalactoside, lactitol, sucrose, trehalose, raffinose, erlose, melezitose) and reducing saccharides (maltose, cellobiose, lactose, melibiose, palatinose, primeverose, rutinose) have been compared as their trimethylsilyl and as their trimethylsilyl-oxime derivatives. Fragmentation characteristics of the glycosidic linkage containing trimethylsilyl-oxime derivatives have been investigated at the first time: these spectra are not available in the official libraries (NIST, Wiley). Applying gas chromatography-ion trap mass spectrometry, informative fragments of high masses with high intensities have been obtained. Results confirmed characteristic differences between the simple trimethylsilyl derivative providing non-reducing glycosides and the trimethylsilyl, syn and antioxime species. Fragmentation starts at the glycosidic linkage resulting in the case of the non-reducing di- and trisaccharides in two, identical fragments of ring structure, with the abundant selective fragment ion at m/z=361. In the case of reducing disaccharides fragmentation provides two different moieties: one moiety of ring structure at m/z=361, and one of the open chain trimethylsilyl-oxime moiety with two special fragment ions at m/z=361 and at m/z=538. These fragmentation patterns proved to be independent on the position of the glycosidic linkage. Distribution of the selective fragment ions, obtained from their total ion current elutions, was evaluated on a quantitative basis, expressed in percentages of the total of ions formed. Reproducibility in the formation of these selective fragment ions, depending on their amount to be fragmented, proved to be proper for identification and quantitation purposes, equally. On this basis, in addition to the authentic ones, also two reducing disaccharides (primeverose and rutinose), as authentic compounds not available on the market, were identified and quantified in natural matrices.