Luis F Schachner, Denise P Tran, Alexander Lee, John P McGee, Kevin Jooss, Kenneth Durbin, Henrique Dos Santos Seckler, Lauren Adams, Erika Cline, Rafael Melani, Ashley N Ives, Benjamin Des Soye, Neil L Kelleher, Steven M Patrie
The combined use of electrospray ionization run in so-called "native mode" with top-down mass spectrometry (nTDMS) is enhancing both structural biology and discovery proteomics by providing three levels of information in a single experiment: the intact mass of a protein or complex, the masses of its subunits and non-covalent cofactors, and fragment ion masses from direct dissociation of subunits that capture the primary sequence and combinations of diverse post-translational modifications (PTMs). While intact mass data are readily deconvoluted using well-known software options, the analysis of fragmentation data that result from a tandem MS experiment - essential for proteoform characterization - is not yet standardized...
July 2021: International Journal of Mass Spectrometry