Borated titania, a new option for the selective enrichment of cis-diol biomolecules.

As low abundance cis-diol biomolecules are of great significance in biological organisms, preparation of materials for the selective enrichment of such compounds is highly favorable for the development of the related proteomics and metabolomics. To this end, we have prepared monolithic borated titania by a non-aqueous sol-gel strategy as a new inorganic affinity material for the specific capture of nucleosides, glycopeptides and glycoproteins. Benefiting from the inorganic framework, this material prevented the hydrophobic interference, which was somewhat inevitable for the mainstream organic-based boronate affinity materials. The prepared material was carefully characterized by scanning electron microscope (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and nitrogen-sorption experiments to investigate the morphology and elemental composition. The excellent performance of borated titania on enrichment of cis-diol biomolecules was demonstrated by extracting the glycopeptides from horseradish peroxidase (HRP) digestion, standard glycoproteins, and nucleosides from a human-urine matrix. This kind of inorganic affinity material offers a new option for selective enrichment or separation of cis-diol biomolecules.