English Abstract A method to establish the monomer composition of (bio)
macromolecules has been developed. The method, to be called monomer
mapping, involves the mass spectrometric determination of the molecular
weight and a computer program. The program generates monomer compositions
corresponding to the measured molecular weight. If more than one monomer
composition for the polymer is generated by monomer mapping, a further
limitation can be obtained from the determination of the number of
exchangeable hydrogens. Monomer mapping can be used to determine the
monomer compositions of individual components in mixtures without applying
(chromatographic) separation techniques. This is a clear advantage over
methods involving monomerization and consecutive determination of the
relative amount of monomers. As a limitation, monomer mapping requires the
elemental compositions of all monomer types possibly present in the polymer.
The largest molecular weight resulting into one monomer composition depends
on the number of monomer types considered. The method can be used as a
supplement to amino acid analysis, generally resulting into the actual amina
acid composition of peptides consisting of up to 25 amino acids. Monomer
mapping was successfully applied to determine glycosyl compositions of fifty
saponins.
