Differentiation of the fucoidan sulfated l-fucose isomers constituents by CE-ESIMS and molecular modeling Original Research Article

α-l-Fucose, the monosaccharide component of fucoidan, is found in the polysaccharide mainly as its sulfated form where sulfate groups are in position 2 and/or 4 and/or 3. The correlation between biological activities and structure of fucoidan requires the determination of the sulfation pattern of the fucose residues. Therefore, it is of importance to discriminate between the isobaric sulfated fucose isomers. For this purpose, the three isomers 2-O-, 3-O-, and 4-O-sulfated fucose have been analyzed using electrospray ion trap mass spectrometry and capillary electrophoresis. The results reported herein show that it is possible to differentiate between these three positional isomers of sulfated fucose based on their fragmentation pattern upon MS/MS experiments. 3-O-Sulfated fucose was characterized