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Mass spectrometric comparison of N-glycan profiles from Caenorhabditis elegans mutant embryos

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Abstract

The free-living nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is a well-characterized eukaryotic model organism. Recent glycomic analyses of the glycosylation potential of this worm revealed an extremely high structural variability of its N-glycans. Moreover, the glycan patterns of each developmental stage appeared to be unique. In this study we have determined the N-glycan profiles of wild-type embryos in comparison to mutant embryos arresting embryogenesis early before differentiation and causing extensive transformations of cell identities, which allows to follow the diversification of N-glycans during development using mass spectrometry. As a striking feature, wild-type embryos obtained from liquid culture expressed a less heterogeneous oligosaccharide pattern than embryos recovered from agar plates. N-glycan profiles of mutant embryos displayed, in part, distinct differences in comparison to wild-type embryos suggesting alterations in oligosaccharide trimming and processing, which may be linked to specific cell fate alterations in the embryos.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (FOR471 and SFB 535, projects A8 and Z1).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Giessen, Friedrichstrasse 24, 35392, Giessen, Germany

    Hildegard Geyer, Martin Schmidt & Rudolf Geyer

  2. Institut für Genetik, Technische Universität Braunschweig Carolo Wilhelmina, Spielmannstrasse 7, 38106, Braunschweig, Germany

    Matthias Müller & Ralf Schnabel

Authors
  1. Hildegard Geyer
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  2. Martin Schmidt
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  3. Matthias Müller
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  4. Ralf Schnabel
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  5. Rudolf Geyer
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Correspondence to Rudolf Geyer.

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Geyer, H., Schmidt, M., Müller, M. et al. Mass spectrometric comparison of N-glycan profiles from Caenorhabditis elegans mutant embryos. Glycoconj J 29, 135–145 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10719-012-9371-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10719-012-9371-8

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