GLYCO-FRAGMENT: A web tool to support the interpretation of mass spectra of complex carbohydrates

Mass spectrometry is frequently used to analyze complex oligosaccharides and glycopeptides. The spectra of glycans can be complicated and difficult to interpret without reference data. Unfortunately, no libraries of suitably pure and homogeneous standards have so far been compiled. The web-based tool GLYCO-FRAGMENT allows the generation of all theoretically possible MS relevant fragments of oligosaccharides as defined using the extended IUPAC nomenclature. The main focus of GLYCO-FRAGMENT is to support the manual assignment of all peaks contained in mass spectra of complex carbohydrates. The service is available at http://www.dkfz.de/spec/projekte/fragments/.