RESUMEN
This paper describes the application of nanoparticle bombardment with time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (NP-ToF-SIMS) for the analysis of native biological surfaces for the case of sagittal sections of mammalian brain tissue. The use of high energy, single nanoparticle impacts (e.g. 520 keV Au400) permits desorption of intact lipid molecular ions, with enhanced molecular ion yield and reduced fragmentation. When coupled with complementary molecular ion fragmentation and exact mass measurement analysis, high energy nanoparticle probes (e.g. 520 keV Au400 NP) provide a powerful tool for the analysis of the lipid components from native brain sections without the need for surface preparation and with ultimate spatial resolution limited to the desorption volume per impact (~103 nm3).
RESUMEN
Non-ergodic as well as ergodic activation methods are capable of maintaining the integrity of base pairs during the top-down analysis of nucleic acids. Here, we investigate the significance of this characteristic in the investigation of higher-order structures of increasing complexity. We show that cognate fragments produced by typical backbone cleavages may not be always detected as separate sequence ions, but rather as individual products that remain associated through mutual pairing contacts. This effect translates into unintended masking of cleavage events that take place in double-stranded regions, thus leading to the preferential detection of fragments originating from unpaired regions. Such effect is determined by the stability of the weak non-covalent association between complementary stretches, which is affected by base composition, length of the double-stranded structure, and charge of the precursor ion selected for analysis. Although such effect may prevent the achievement of full sequence coverage for primary structure determination, it may provide the key to correctly differentiate double- versus single-stranded regions, in what could be defined as gas-phase footprinting experiments. In light of the critical role played by base pairs in defining the higher-order structure of nucleic acids, these approaches will be expected to support an increased utilization of mass spectrometry for the investigation of nucleic acid structure and dynamics.
RESUMEN
The application of Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance (FTICR) mass spectrometry to the quantitative study of molecular recognition in the gas phase is reviewed. Because most quantitative measurements are dependent on accurate determination of the pressure of a neutral reagent, methods for accurate pressure measurement in FTICR, including gauge calibration using a reaction with known rate constants (the traditional method), exothermic proton transfer rate measurement (often the best method when accurate neutral pressures in the trapping cell are desired), and linewidth measurement (a little-used, but generally applicable method) are discussed. The use of rate constant measurements in molecular recognition is illustrated with examples employing natural abundance isotopic labeling to study self-exchange and 2 : 1 ligand:metal complex formation kinetics in crown ether-alkali cation systems. Self-exchange rates do not correlate with alkali cation/crown cavity size relationships, whereas 2 : 1 complex formation kinetics correlate strongly with size relationships. The use of exchange equilibrium constant measurements to characterize molecular recognition is illustrated by alkali cation exchanges between 18-crown-6 and the isomers of dicyclohexano-18-crown-6. These experiments show that the alkyl-substituted ligand binds alkali cations better than unsubstituted 18-crown-6 in the gas phase, in accordance with expectations based on the higher polarizability of the alkyl-substituted ligand. Further, the metal binding thermochemistry differs for the two dicyclohexano-18-crown-6 isomers, with the bowl-shaped cis-syn-cis isomer binding all the alkali cations more strongly than the cis-anti-cis isomer. The measurement of entropies and enthalpies associated with one of the most subtle forms of molecular recognition, enantiomeric discrimination, is illustrated by studies of the discrimination between enantiomers of chiral amines by dimethyldiketopyridino-18-crown-6. This chiral ligand binds chiral primary ammonium cations that have the opposite absolute configuration at their stereocenter more strongly than the enantiomer with the same absolute configuration. Gas-phase studies show that this enantiomeric discrimination is enthalpic in origin, likely related to more favorable pi-pi stacking for the preferred enantiomer. Entropy disfavors binding of the preferred enantiomer.
