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Native mass spectrometry (MS) is proving to be a disruptive technique for studying the interactions of proteins, necessary for understanding the functional roles of these biomolecules. Recent research is expanding the application of native MS towards membrane proteins directly from isolated membrane preparations or from purified detergent micelles. The former results in complex spectra comprising several heterogeneous protein complexes; the latter enables therapeutic protein targets to be screened against multiplexed preparations of compound libraries. In both cases, the resulting spectra are increasingly complex to assign/interpret, and the key to these new directions of native MS research is the ability to perform native top-down analysis, which allows unambiguous peak assignment. To achieve this, detergent removal is necessary prior to MS analyzers, which allow selection of specific m / z values, representing the parent ion for downstream activation. Here, we describe a novel, enhanced declustering (ED) device installed into the first pumping region of a cyclic IMS-enabled mass spectrometry platform. The device enables declustering of ions prior to the quadrupole by imparting collisional activation through an oscillating electric field applied between two parallel plates. The positioning of the device enables liberation of membrane protein ions from detergent micelles. Quadrupole selection can now be utilized to isolate protein-ligand complexes, and downstream collision cells enable the dissociation and identification of binding partners. We demonstrate that ion mobility (IM) significantly aids in the assignment of top-down spectra, aligning fragments to their corresponding parent ions by means of IM drift time. Using this approach, we were able to confidently assign and identify a novel hit compound against Pf MATE, obtained from multiplexed ligand libraries.

Unambiguous identification of distinct proteoforms and their biological functions is a significant analytical challenge due to the many combinations of post-translational modifications (PTM) that generate isomeric proteoforms. Resulting chimeric tandem mass spectra hinder detailed structural characterization of individual proteoforms for mixtures with more than two isomers. Large isomeric peptides and intact isomeric proteins are extremely difficult to distinguish with traditional chromatographic separation methods. Gas-phase ion separation techniques such as ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) methods now offer high resolving power that may enable separation of isomeric biomolecules, such as peptides and proteins. We explored novel high-resolution cyclic ion mobility spectrometry (cIM) combined with an electro-magnetostatic cell for "on-the-fly" electron capture dissociation (ECD) for separation and sequencing of large isomeric peptides. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach on ternary mixtures of mono- and trimethylated isomers of histone H3 N-tails (∼5.4 kDa), achieving a complete separation of these isomers with an average resolving power of ∼400 and a resolution of 1.5 and with nearly 100% amino acid sequence coverage. Our results demonstrate the potential of the cIM-MS/MS(ECD) technology to enhance middle-down and top-down proteomics workflows, thereby facilitating the identification of near-identical proteoforms with essential biological functions in complex mixtures.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder of increasing concern. It belongs to diseases termed tauopathies which are characterized by inclusions of abnormally hyperphosphorylated and truncated forms of the protein tau. Studies of tauopathies often focus on detection and characterization of these aberrant tau proteoforms, in particular the phosphorylation sites, which represent a significant analytical challenge for example when several phosphosites can be present on the same peptide. Such isomers can even be difficult to fully separate chromatographically. Since recently introduced cyclic ion mobility-mass spectrometry can offer different selectivity, we have investigated the closely positioned phosphorylation sites S214, T212, and T217 of a tryptic peptide from proline rich region of tau-TPSLPTPPTREPK. The conformational heterogeneity of the isomeric peptides in the gas phase hindered their separation due to their overlapping arrival time distributions. Increasing the resolution of the analysis alone is insufficient to distinguish the peptides in a mixture typical of patient samples. We therefore developed a method based on a combination of collision-induced dissociation, isomeric product ions ( m / z 677) mobility separation and post-mobility dissociation to aid in analyzing the isomeric phosphopeptides of tau in diseased brain extract. For all three isomers (T212, S214, and T217), the ion mobility signal of the ion at m / z 677 was still observable at the concentration of 0.1 nmol/L. This work not only offers insights into the phosphorylation of tau protein in AD but also provides an analytical workflow for the characterization of challenging pathological protein modifications in neurodegenerative diseases.

A novel mass spectrometry system is described here comprising a quadrupole-multireflecting time-of-flight design. The new multireflecting time-of-flight analyzer has an effective path length of 48 m and employs planar, gridless ion mirrors providing fourth-order energy focusing resulting in resolving power over 200 000 fwhm and sub-ppm mass accuracy. We show how these attributes are maintained with relatively fast acquisition speeds, setting the system apart from other high resolution mass spectrometers. We have integrated this new system into both liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry and mass spectrometry imaging workflows to demonstrate how the instrument characteristics are of benefit to these applications.

Native mass spectrometry is a powerful tool for the analysis of noncovalent complexes. When coupled with high-resolution ion mobility, this technique can be used to investigate the conformational changes induced in said complexes by different solution or gas-phase conditions. In this study, we describe how a new-generation high-resolution ion mobility instrument equipped with a cyclic ion mobility cell can be utilized for the analysis of large biomolecular systems, including temperature-induced protein aggregates of masses greater than 1.5 MDa, as well as a 63 kDa oligonucleotide complex. The effects of and the interplay between the voltages applied to the different components of the cyclic ion mobility spectrometry system on ion transmission and arrival time distribution were demonstrated using biomolecules covering the m / z range 2000-10,000. These data were used to establish a theoretical framework for achieving the best separation in the cyclic ion mobility system. Finally, the cyclic ion mobility mass spectrometer was coupled with a temperature-controlled electrospray ionization source to investigate high-mass protein aggregation. This analysis showed that it was possible to continuously monitor the change in abundance for several conformations of MDa aggregates with increasing temperature. This work significantly increases the range of biomolecules that can be analyzed by both cyclic ion mobility and temperature-controlled electrospray ionization mass spectrometry, providing new possibilities for high-resolution ion mobility analysis.

There is an increasing emphasis on the critical evaluation of interbatch purity and physical stability of therapeutic peptides. This is due to concerns over the impact that product- and process-related impurities may have on safety and efficacy of this class of drug. Aspartic acid isomerization to isoaspartic acid is a common isobaric impurity that can be very difficult to identify without first synthesizing isoAsp peptide standards for comparison by chromatography. As such, analytical tools that can determine if an Asp residue has isomerized, as well as the site of isomerization within the peptide sequence, are highly sought after. Ion mobility-mass spectrometry is a conformation-selective method that has developed rapidly in recent years particularly with the commercialization of traveling wave ion mobility instruments. This study employed a cyclic ion mobility (cIMS) mass spectrometry system to investigate the conformational characteristics of a therapeutic peptide and three synthetic isomeric forms, each with a single Asp residue isomerized to isoAsp. cIMS was able to not only show distinct conformational differences between each peptide but crucially, in conjunction with a simple workflow for comparing ion mobility data, it correctly located which Asp residue in each peptide had isomerized to isoAsp. This work highlights the value of cIMS as a potential screening tool in the analysis of therapeutic peptides prone to the formation of isoAsp impurities.

The characterization of enantiomers is an important analytical challenge in the chemical and life sciences. Thorough evaluation of the purity of chiral molecules is particularly required in the pharmaceutical industry where safety concerns are paramount. Assessment of the enantiomeric composition is still challenging and time-consuming, meaning that alternative approaches are required. In this study, we exploit the formation of dimers as diastereomeric pairs of enantiomers to affect separation by high resolution cyclic ion mobility-mass spectrometry. Using the example of ( R / S )-thalidomide, we show that even though this is not an enantiomer separation, we can determine which enantiomer is in excess and obtain quantitative information on the enantiomer composition without the need for a chiral modifier. Further examples of the approach are presented, including d/l-tryptophan and ( R / S )-propanolol, and demonstrate the need for mobility resolving power in excess of 400 (CCS/ΔCCS).

Tandem mass spectrometry of denatured, multiply charged high mass protein precursor ions yield extremely dense spectra with hundreds of broad and overlapping product ion isotopic distributions of differing charge states that yield an elevated baseline of unresolved "noise" centered about the precursor ion. Development of mass analyzers and signal processing methods to increase mass resolving power and manipulation of precursor and product ion charge through solution additives or ion-ion reactions have been thoroughly explored as solutions to spectral congestion. Here, we demonstrate the utility of electron capture dissociation (ECD) coupled with high-resolution cyclic ion mobility spectrometry (cIMS) to greatly increase top-down protein characterization capabilities. Congestion of protein ECD spectra was reduced using cIMS of the ECD product ions and "mobility fractions", that is, extracted mass spectra for segments of the 2D mobiligram ( m / z versus drift time). For small proteins, such as ubiquitin (8.6 kDa), where mass resolving power was not the limiting factor for characterization, pre-IMS ECD and mobility fractions did not significantly increase protein sequence coverage, but an increase in the number of identified product ions was observed. However, a dramatic increase in performance, measured by protein sequence coverage, was observed for larger and more highly charged species, such as the +35 charge state of carbonic anhydrase (29 kDa). Pre-IMS ECD combined with mobility fractions yielded a 135% increase in the number of annotated isotope clusters and a 75% increase in unique product ions compared to processing without using the IMS dimension. These results yielded 89% sequence coverage for carbonic anhydrase.

We describe the implementation of a simple three-electrode surface-induced dissociation (SID) cell on a cyclic ion mobility spectrometer (cIMS) and demonstrate the utility of multipass mobility separations for resolving multiple conformations of protein complexes generated during collision-induced and surface-induced unfolding (CIU & SIU) experiments. In addition to CIU and SIU, SID of protein complexes is readily accomplished within the native instrument software and with no additional external power supplies by entering a single SID collision energy, a simplification in user experience compared to prior implementations. A set of cyclic homomeric protein complexes and a heterohexamer with known CID and SID behavior were analyzed to investigate mass and mobility resolution improvements, the latter of which improved by 20-50% (median: 33%) compared to a linear travelling wave device. Multiple passes of intact complexes, or their SID fragments, increased the mobility resolution by an average of 15% per pass, with the racetrack effect being observed after ∼3 or 4 passes, depending on the drift time spread of the analytes. Even with modest improvements to apparent mobility resolving power, multipass experiments were particularly useful for separating conformations produced from CIU and SIU experiments. We illustrate several examples where either (1) multipass experiments revealed multiple overlapping conformations previously unobserved or obscured due to limited mobility resolution, or (2) CIU or SIU conformations that appeared 'native' in a single pass experiment were actually slightly compacted or expanded, with the change only being measurable through multipass experiments. The work conducted here, the first utilization of multipass cyclic ion mobility for CIU, SIU, and SID of protein assemblies and a demonstration of a wholly integrated SIU/SID workflow, paves the way for widespread adoption of SID technology for native mass spectrometry and also improves our understanding of gas-phase protein complex CIU and SIU conformationomes.

Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) have taken on an increasing importance for the treatment of various diseases, including cancers and immunological disorders. Disulfide bonds play a pivotal role in therapeutic antibody structure and activity relationships. Disulfide connectivity and cysteine-related variants are considered as critical quality attributes that must be monitored during mAb manufacturing and storage, as non-native disulfide bridges and aggregates might be responsible for loss of biological function and immunogenicity. The presence of cysteine residues in the complementarity-determining regions (CDRs) is rare in human antibodies but may be critical for the antigen-binding or deleterious for therapeutic antibody development. Consequently, in-depth characterization of their disulfide network is a prerequisite for mAb developability assessment. Mass spectrometry (MS) techniques represent powerful tools for accurate identification of disulfide connectivity. We report here on the MS-based characterization of an IgG4 comprising two additional cysteine residues in the CDR of its light chain. Classical bottom-up approaches after trypsin digestion first allowed identification of a dipeptide containing two disulfide bridges. To further investigate the conformational heterogeneity of the disulfide-bridged dipeptide, we performed ion mobility spectrometry-mass spectrometry (IMS-MS) experiments. Our results highlight benefits of high resolution IMS-MS to tackle the conformational landscape of disulfide peptides generated after trypsin digestion of a humanized IgG4 mAb under development. By comparing arrival time distributions of the mAb-collected and synthetic peptides, cyclic IMS afforded unambiguous assessment of disulfide bonds. In addition to classical peptide mapping, qualitative high-resolution IMS-MS can be of great interest to identify disulfide bonds within therapeutic mAbs.