A method for detecting O-glycanase in biological samples using a combination of MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry and time-resolved fluorimetry.

O-Glycans (mucin type oligosaccharides) are ubiquitously found in various glycoproteins such as mucin-type glycoproteins on the surface of various digestive organs. In the present paper, we propose a method for detecting O-glycanase which catalyzes the hydrolysis of the O-glycan linkage between oligosaccharides and serine/threonine residues of mucin-type glycoprotein. As the substrate for O-glycanases, we chose glycopeptides containing O-glycans derived from bovine fetuin. The present method is divided into two parts. At the initial stage, the presence of O-glycanase was confirmed by observing characteristic ions due to O-glycans and peptides released from the glycopeptide by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF) mass spectrometry. In the second step, europium labeled O-glycosylated peptide permits more detailed analysis such as enzyme kinetics. We demonstrated the usefulness of the present method using O-glycanase (Streptococcus pneumoniae) as model enzyme. The present approach can easily confirm the presence of O-glycanase by detecting both deglycosylated peptides and O-glycans, even if contaminating peptides or glycosidases are present in crude biological samples.