A novel chemical procedure for the selective removal of nonreducing terminal N-acetyl hexosamine residues from glycolipids.

A two-step oxidative hydrolysis procedure is described for the selective removal of nonreducing terminal N-acetylhexosamine residues from glycolipids. The procedure gives a 50-60% yield of the n-1 hexosyl ceramide, the remainder being peeling products (n-2, n-3, etc.). The reaction is dependent on the selective deacetylation of nonreducing terminal N-acetyl hexosamine residues by aqueous base hydrolysis. Deglycosylation then occurs in the presence of hydrogen peroxide. Glycolipids containing internal or no N-acetylhexosamine residues are unaltered in these reactions. This method is suitable for the large-scale deglycosylation of appropriate glycolipids and may also be used as an adjunct in structural determination of unknown amino sugar-containing glycolipids.