Electronic structure, stability, and formation dynamics of hypervalent molecular clusters: CH3NH3(CH3NH2)n

Hypervalent radical formation probed by electron transfer dissociation of zwitterionic tryptophan and tryptophan-containing dipeptides complexed with Ca2+ and 18-crown-6 in the gas phase

The relationship between peptide structure and electron transfer dissociation (ETD) is important for structural analysis by mass spectrometry. In the present study, the formation, structure and reactivity of the reaction intermediate in the ETD process were examined using a quadrupole ion trap mass spectrometer equipped with an electrospray ionization source. ETD product ions of zwitterionic tryptophan (Trp) and Trp-containing dipeptides (Trp-Gly and Gly-Trp) were detected without reionization using non-covalent analyte complexes with Ca(2+) and 18-crown-6 (18C6). In the collision-induced dissociation, NH3 loss was the main dissociation pathway, and loss related to the dissociation of the carboxyl group was not observed. This indicated that Trp and its dipeptides on Ca(2+) (18C6) adopted a zwitterionic structure with an NH3 (+) group and bonded to Ca(2+) (18C6) through the COO(-) group. Hydrogen atom loss observed in the ETD spectra indicated that intermolecular electron transfer from a molecular anion to the NH3 (+) group formed a hypervalent ammonium radical, R-NH3 , as a reaction intermediate, which was unstable and dissociated rapidly through N-H bond cleavage. In addition, N-Cα bond cleavage forming the z1 ion was observed in the ETD spectra of Trp-GlyCa(2+) (18C6) and Gly-TrpCa(2+) (18C6). This dissociation was induced by transfer of a hydrogen atom in the cluster formed via an N-H bond cleavage of the hypervalent ammonium radical and was in competition with the hydrogen atom loss. The results showed that a hypervalent radical intermediate, forming a delocalized hydrogen atom, contributes to the backbone cleavages of peptides in ETD.

Toward a general mechanism of electron capture dissociation

The effects of positive charge on the properties of ammonium and amide radicals were investigated by ab initio and density functional theory calculations with the goal of elucidating the energetics of electron capture dissociation (ECD) of multiply charged peptide ions. The electronic properties of the amide group in N-methylacetamide (NMA) are greatly affected by the presence of a remote charge in the form of a point charge, methylammonium, or guanidinium cations. The common effect of the remote charge is an increase of the electron affinity of the amide group, resulting in exothermic electron capture. The N-Calpha bond dissociation and transition state energies in charge-stabilized NMA anions are 20-50 kJ mol(-1) greater than in the hydrogen atom adduct. The zwitterions formed by electron capture have proton affinities that were calculated as 1030-1350 kJ mol(-1), and are sufficiently basic for the amide carbonyl to exothermically abstract a proton from the ammonium, guanidinium and imidazolium groups in protonated lysine, arginine, and histidine residues, respectively. A new mechanism is proposed for ECD of multiply charged peptide and protein cations in which the electron enters a charge-stabilized electronic state delocalized over the amide group, which is a superbase that abstracts a proton from a sterically proximate amino acid residue to form a labile aminoketyl radical that dissociates by N-Calpha bond cleavage. This mechanism explains the low selectivity of N-Calpha bond dissociations induced by electron capture, and is applicable to dissociations of peptide ions in which the charge carriers are metal ions or quaternary ammonium groups. The new amide superbase and the previously proposed mechanisms of ECD can be uniformly viewed as being triggered by intramolecular proton transfer in charge-reduced amide cation-radicals. In contrast, remote charge affects N-H bond dissociation in weakly bound ground electronic states of hypervalent ammonium radicals, as represented by methylammonium, CH3NH3*, but has a negligible effect on the N-H bond dissociation in the strongly bound excited electronic states. This refutes previous speculations that loss of "hot hydrogen" can occur from an excited state of an ammonium radical.