Open Access
Activated Ion Electron Transfer Dissociation for Improved Fragmentation of Intact Proteins
Author(s) -
Nicholas M. Riley,
Michael S. Westphall,
Joshua J. Coon
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
analytical chemistry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.117
H-Index - 332
eISSN - 1520-6882
pISSN - 0003-2700
DOI - 10.1021/acs.analchem.5b00881
Subject(s) - chemistry , fragmentation (computing) , electron transfer dissociation , dissociation (chemistry) , electron capture dissociation , electron transfer , ion , biophysics , photochemistry , tandem mass spectrometry , mass spectrometry , chromatography , organic chemistry , computer science , operating system , biology
Here we report the first implementation of activated ion electron transfer dissociation (AI-ETD) for top down protein characterization, showing that AI-ETD definitively extends the m/z range over which ETD can be effective for fragmentation of intact proteins. AI-ETD, which leverages infrared photon bombardment concurrent to the ETD reaction to mitigate nondissociative electron transfer, was performed using a novel multipurpose dissociation cell that can perform both beam-type collisional dissociation and ion-ion reactions on an ion trap-Orbitrap hybrid mass spectrometer. AI-ETD increased the number of c- and z-type product ions for all charge states over ETD alone, boosting product ion yield by nearly 4-fold for low charge density precursors. AI-ETD also outperformed HCD, generating more matching fragments for all proteins at all charge states investigated. In addition to generating more unique fragment ions, AI-ETD provided greater protein sequence coverage compared to both HCD and ETD. In all, the effectiveness of AI-ETD across the entirety of the m/z spectrum demonstrates its efficacy for robust fragmentation of intact proteins.