Edinburgh Napier University

  An appreciation of the structures of the oligosaccharide chains which become attached to biomolecules (the
process known as glycosylation), and their relevance to the biological function of the molecule concerned, has progressed
rapidly in recent years with developments in site-selective protein glycosylation, oligosaccharide synthesis and in vivo targeting
of oligosaccharides. These developments have necessitated the parallel development of effective analytical tools for the
determination of the structures of glycosylation. The conclusion of studies in the 1980s and 1990s was that high pH anion
exchange chromatography (HPAEC) was the most effective HPLC mode for the analysis of glycosylation. It allowed the fractionation
of complex mixtures of monosaccharides or oligosaccharides, the latter in terms of charge, size, composition, anomerity
and intra-chain linkages. This review reinvestigates whether HPAEC still appears to offer the most effective means of
analysing glycosylation.