Extended kinetic method and RRKM modeling to reinvestigate proline's proton affinity and approach the meaning of effective temperature

Benchmarking higher energy collision dissociation (HCD) by investigation of binding energies of gas-phase host-guest complexes of hemicryptophane cages

Synthesis of host molecules that feature well-defined characteristics for molecular recognition of guest molecules is often a major aim of synthetic host-guest (H-G) chemistry. A key consideration in evaluating the selectivity of hosts and the affinities of guests is the measurement of binding energies of obtained H-G complexes. In contrast to nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) or fluorescence measurements that are capable of measuring binding strengths in solution, mass spectrometry offers the opportunity to measure gas-phase binding energies. Presented in this article is a higher energy collision dissociation (HCD) approach for determining critical energies of dissociation of H-G complexes. Experiments were performed on electrospray ionization (ESI)-generated H-G pairs in an LTQ-XL/Orbitrap hybrid instrument. The presented HCD approach requires preliminary calibration of the internal energy distribution of generated ions that was achieved by the use of activation parameters that were known from previous low-energy collision-induced dissociation (low-energy CID) experiments. Internal energy deposition was modeled based on a truncated Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution and characteristic temperature (T_char ). Using this method, critical energies of dissociation were determined for 10 H-G biologically relevant complexes of the heteroditopic hemicryptophane cage host (Host). Obtained results are compared with those found previously by low-energy CID. The use of this HCD technique is relatively straightforward, although its implementation does require knowledge (or a presumption) about the Arrhenius pre-exponential factor of the complexes to obtain their critical energies of dissociation.

Investigations of the Equilibrium Conditions in Plumes of Laser Desorbed Sinapic Acid with Amino Acid Analytes: Influence of Sample Preparation and Matrix to Analyte Ratio

The equilibrium nature of a plume of laser desorbed material is examined through the application of a previously developed thermodynamic model to the ion signals observed in 337 nm MALDI mass spectra of mixtures of the matrix sinapic acid with the amino acids alanine, valine, isoleucine, and phenylalanine. Samples are prepared using both conventional dried-droplet and solvent-free methods for comparison. The relative yield of protonated amino acid is shown to increase as the amino acid gas-phase basicity increases for both sample preparation methods. Matrix gas phase basicity values extracted from the equilibrium plots are shown to be in good agreement ([M - H⁺]^• 876 kJ/mol and [M] 879 kJ/mol) with published experimental values supporting a mechanism wherein the protonated sinapic acid and/or the matrix radical cation act as the proton donor species. These experiments further reveal that there is a large difference in the extracted plume effective temperatures with the solvent-free method yielding lower effective temperatures as compared to the dried-droplet sample preparation, e.g., 552 K versus 1296 K, respectively, at M/A 1:1 (mole/mole). In addition, these experiments suggest that plume effective temperatures decrease as the relative amount of matrix deposited with the analyte increases, regardless of the sample preparation method. Cumulatively, these observations suggest that the crystalline solid allows more efficient transfer of the photoexcitation energy during the sample desorption step, as compared to the solvent-free sample, and/or collisional cooling is more effective for the plume of material desorbed from the solvent-free sample as compared to the conventional dried-droplet sample.

TUTORIAL: ION ACTIVATION IN TANDEM MASS SPECTROMETRY USING ULTRA-HIGH RESOLUTION INSTRUMENTATION

Tandem mass spectrometry involves isolation of specific precursor ions and their subsequent excitation through collision-, photon-, or electron-mediated activation techniques in order to induce unimolecular dissociation leading to formation of fragment ions. These powerful ion activation techniques, typically used in between mass selection and mass analysis steps for structural elucidation, have not only found a wide variety of analytical applications in chemistry and biology, but they have also been used to study the fundamental properties of ions in the gas phase. In this tutorial paper, a brief overview is presented of the theories that have been used to describe the activation of ions and their subsequent unimolecular dissociation. Acronyms of the presented techniques include CID, PQD, HCD, SORI, SID, BIRD, IRMPD, UVPD, EPD, ECD, EDD, ETD, and EID. The fundamental principles of these techniques are discussed in the context of their implementation on ultra-high resolution tandem mass spectrometers. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Mass Spec Rev.