- Heterochitooligosaccharides possess interesting biol. properties. Isobaric mixts. of such linear heterochitooligosaccharides can be obtained by chem. or enzymic degrdn. of chitosan. However, the sepn. of such mixts. is a challenging anal. problem which is so far unresolved. It is shown that these isobaric mixts. can be sequenced and quantified simultaneously using std. derivatization and multistage tandem mass spectrometric techniques. A linear ion trap mass spectrometer equipped with a vacuum matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization (vMALDI) source is used to perform MS2 as well as MS3 expts. [on SciFinder (R)].
