Cover Picture: Electrophoresis 24'2011

Issue no. 24 is in one major part a Focus Issue on Glycomics and Glycoproteomics that includes 12 contributions “describing the development of new analytical methods or improvement of existing methods, permitting enhanced and sensitive analysis of glycans and glycoproteins.” The first part of the Focus Issue “includes two review articles critically evaluating the current status of glycan analysis by both hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography and capillary electrophoresis‐mass spectrometry.” The second part of this Focus Issue “includes 4 research articles describing improved methods for the analysis of glycans by capillary electrophoresis with laser‐induced fluorescence detection.” The third part “includes 4 research articles describing new mass spectrometry and tandem mass spectrometry methods for the sensitive characterization of glycans and glycopeptides. Last but not least, 2 research articles are included in the fourth part, describing the analysis of glycoproteins by SDS‐urea agarose polyacrylamide composite gel electrophoresis and magnetic bead array‐coupled to tandem mass spectrometry.” Issue 24 has also an additional eight regular contributions emphasizing interesting studies on proteins and proteomics. Featured articles include: Site‐specific characterisation of densely O ‐glycosylated mucin‐type peptides using electron transfer dissociation ESI‐MS/MS ( 10.1002/elps.201100294 )) Evaluation of non‐reductive ?‐elimination/Michael‐addition for glycosylation site determination in mucin‐like O‐glycopeptides ( 10.1002/elps.201100393 )) High‐throughput lectin magnetic bead array‐coupled tandem mass spectrometry (LeMBA‐MS) for glycoprotein biomarker discovery ( 10.1002/elps.201100341 )) Rapid determination of protein binding constant by a pressure‐mediated affinity capillary electrophoresis method ( 10.1002/elps.201100211 )) Plasma proteomics for biomarker discovery: A study in blue ( 10.1002/elps.201100307 ))