Predicting Structural Motifs of Glycosaminoglycans using Cryogenic Infrared Spectroscopy and Random Forest

J Am Chem Soc. 2023 Apr 12;145(14):7859-7868. doi: 10.1021/jacs.2c12762. Epub 2023 Mar 31.

Abstract

In recent years, glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) have emerged into the focus of biochemical and biomedical research due to their importance in a variety of physiological processes. These molecules show great diversity, which makes their analysis highly challenging. A promising tool for identifying the structural motifs and conformation of shorter GAG chains is cryogenic gas-phase infrared (IR) spectroscopy. In this work, the cryogenic gas-phase IR spectra of mass-selected heparan sulfate (HS) di-, tetra-, and hexasaccharide ions were recorded to extract vibrational features that are characteristic to structural motifs. The data were augmented with chondroitin sulfate (CS) disaccharide spectra to assemble a training library for random forest (RF) classifiers. These were used to discriminate between GAG classes (CS or HS) and different sulfate positions (2-O-, 4-O-, 6-O-, and N-sulfation). With optimized data preprocessing and RF modeling, a prediction accuracy of >97% was achieved for HS tetra- and hexasaccharides based on a training set of only 21 spectra. These results exemplify the importance of combining gas-phase cryogenic IR ion spectroscopy with machine learning to improve the future analytical workflow for GAG sequencing and that of other biomolecules, such as metabolites.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Chondroitin Sulfates / chemistry
  • Glycosaminoglycans* / chemistry
  • Heparitin Sulfate
  • Random Forest*
  • Spectrophotometry, Infrared

Substances

  • Glycosaminoglycans
  • Chondroitin Sulfates
  • Heparitin Sulfate