Quantitative Bottom-Up Glycomic Analysis of Polysaccharides in Food Matrices Using Liquid Chromatography–Tandem Mass Spectrometry

Carbohydrates are the most abundant biomolecules in nature, and specifically, polysaccharides are present in almost all plants and fungi. Due to their compositional diversity, polysaccharide analysis remains challenging. Compared to other biomolecules, high-throughput analysis for carbohydrates has yet to be developed. To address this gap in analytical science, we have developed a multiplexed, high-throughput, and quantitative approach for polysaccharide analysis in foods. Specifically, polysaccharides were depolymerized using a nonenzymatic chemical digestion process followed by oligosaccharide fingerprinting using high performance liquid chromatography-quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (HPLC-QTOF-MS). Both label-free relative quantitation and absolute quantitation were done based on the abundances of oligosaccharides produced. Method validation included evaluating recovery for a range of polysaccharide standards and a breakfast cereal standard reference material. Nine polysaccharides (starch, cellulose, β-glucan, mannan, galactan, arabinan, xylan, xyloglucan, chitin) were successfully quantitated with sufficient accuracy (5-25% bias) and high reproducibility (2-15% CV). Additionally, the method was used to identify and quantitate polysaccharides from a diverse sample set of food samples. Absolute concentrations of nine polysaccharides from apples and onions were obtained using an external calibration curve, where varietal differences were observed in some of the samples. The methodology developed in this study will provide complementary polysaccharide-level information to deepen our understanding of the interactions of dietary polysaccharides, gut microbial community, and human health.