Plant Proteomics and Glycosylation

In plant cells, as in other eucaryotic cells, glycosylation is one of the most studied posttranslational events. It can be of two types, N - or O -glycosylation, depending on the linkage involved between the protein backbone and the oligosaccharide moiety. In this review, we present different methods, commonly used in our laboratory, to study the glycosylation of plant proteins. These approaches rely on blot detection with glycan-specific probes, as well as specific deglycosylation of the glycoproteins, followed by mass spectrometry analysis. Such experiments not only allow determination of whether the protein is a glycoprotein, but also how and where it is glycosylated. The last part of this chapter is dedicated to the specific purification and identification of glycoprotein populations in plant cells, so-called glycoproteomics.