Herein, I provide a personal perspective on high‐resolution multipass ion mobility spectrometry‐mass spectrometry (IMS‐MS), with a specific emphasis on cyclic (cIMS) and structures for lossless ion ...manipulations (SLIM IMS)‐based separations. My overarching goal for this perspective was to detail what I believe will be the key important areas in which IMS‐MS will help shape the bioanalytical community and especially omics‐based research.
De novo carbohydrate sequencing, including monosaccharide identification, largely remains a tremendous analytical challenge. A first step in the complete structural determination of any large ...polysaccharide is an accurate and robust method for analysis of the constituent monosaccharides. Herein, the first mass spectrometry-based method for the complete identification and absolute configuration determination of all 12 pentose isomers, including the d and l enantiomers for arabinose, lyxose, ribose, xylose, ribulose, and xylulose, is reported. As compared to earlier work to distinguish hexose isomers, the chiral separation of the pentose isomers was significantly more challenging. Specifically, the 12 pentoses are much more structurally similar to one another, with only the axial or equatorial orientation of two hydroxyl groups differentiating among these isomers in their five-membered ring furanose structure and smaller energetic differences between pentose conformations than between hexose conformations. Despite such inherently minimal energetic differences between the 12 pentoses, two unique fixed ligand kinetic method combinations were discovered to achieve chiral discrimination for this set of isomers. This assay can be readily applied to the identification of any isolated pentose monosaccharide using only microgram quantities and a commercial instrument and complements the method to distinguish hexose isomers. A workflow that incorporates this mass spectrometry-based method and thereby could achieve complete de novo identification of all monosaccharide building blocks in an oligo- or polysaccharide is proposed.
Common glycosidase assays rely on the hydrolysis of non-natural labeled sugar substrates that thereby preclude obtaining information as to the specificity of the leaving group and therefore the most ...kinetically competent natural substrates. A β-mannosidase could be known to hydrolyze β-mannose, for example, but from what is presently hard to determine by any high-throughput means. Herein, the first chiral dopant-based mass spectrometric assay, with its foundation rooted in the Cooks’ fixed ligand kinetic method, is presented to screen label-free monosaccharide-containing substrates for their kinetic competency with a given glycosidase as a step to name these enzymes not just for the sugar that is removed but also for the leaving group that is produced. This work also presents the first information about the substrate specificity of two specific hyperthermophilic enzymes and the first test of some native, unlabeled substrates (α-1-4 mannobiose and β-1-galactosylphingosine) with mesophilic enzymes.
Herein, we introduce a two-dimensional ion mobility spectrometry strategy to better characterize carbohydrate isomers. In a single experiment, we can derive cyclic ion mobility-mass spectrometry ...(cIMS-MS)-based collision cross section (CCS) values in conjunction with measuring isotopic shifts through the relative arrival times of light and heavy isotopologues. These isotopic shifts were introduced by permethylating carbohydrates with either light, CH
3
, or heavy, CD
3
, labels at every available hydroxyl group to generate a light/heavy pair of isotopologues for every individual species analyzed. We observed that our calculated CCS values, which were exclusively measured for the light isotopologues, were orthogonal to our measured isotopic shifts (i.e., relative arrival time values between heavy and light permethylated isotopologues). Our permethylation-induced isotopic shifts scaled well with increasing molecular weight, up to ~
m/z
1300, expanding the analysis of isotopic shifts to molecules 3–4 times as large as those previously studied. Our presented use of coupling CCS values with the measurement of isotopic shifts in a single cIMS-MS experiment is a proof-of-concept demonstration that our two-dimensional approach can improve the characterization of challenging isomeric carbohydrates. We envision that our presented 2D IMS approach will have broad utility for varying molecular classes as well as being amenable to many forms of derivatization.
Human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) are an unconjugated class of glycans that have been implicated for their role in promoting the healthy development of the brain–gut axes of infants. Production of ...HMOs is ever-changing and specifically tailored for each infant in response to various biological factors (e.g., cognitive development, diseases, or allergies). While every HMO consists of up to only five monosaccharides, their structures can be composed of many possible glycosidic linkage positions and corresponding α/β anomericities, linear or branched chains, and potential fucosylation/sialylation modifications, thus leading to a tremendous degree of isomeric heterogeneity. With limited availability of authentic standards for every putative HMO structure (estimated to be >200 total), new analytical methods are needed for their accurate characterization. Complete sequencing of the human milk glycome would enable a better understanding of their infant-specific biological roles and potentially lead to their widespread incorporation into infant formula. Herein, we explore the use of our high-resolution cyclic ion mobility spectrometry–mass spectrometry (cIMS–MS)-based platform for the separation of core disaccharide and trisaccharide isomer building blocks as a first step toward the sequencing of larger HMOs. By utilizing the flexible capabilities of the cIMS array, separation pathlengths were extended up to 40 m, thus enabling the resolution of all seven sets of sialylated, fucosylated galactosyllactose and lactosamine HMO building block isomers. Additionally, we assessed the utility of pre-/post-cIMS tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) and tandem cIMS (cIMS/cIMS) for the characterization of HMOs based on their diagnostic fragmentation patterns and mobility fingerprints. We anticipate that our presented cIMS–MS-based methodology will enable the better characterization of larger, unknown HMOs when incorporated into an overall workflow that also includes online liquid chromatography and enzymatic hydrolyses.
Herein, we present the use of mass distribution-based isotopic shifts in high-resolution cyclic ion mobility spectrometry–mass spectrometry (cIMS-MS)-based separations to characterize various ...isomeric species as well as conformers. Specifically, by using the observed relative arrival time values for the isotopologues found in the isotopic envelope after long pathlength cIMS-MS separations, we were able to distinguish dibromoaniline, dichloroaniline, and quaternary ammonium salt isomers, as well as a pair of 25-hydroxyvitamin D3 conformers based on their respective mass distribution-based shifts. Our observed shifts were highly reproducible and broadly applied to the isotopologues of various atoms (i.e., Cl, Br, and C). Additionally, through a control experiment, we determined that such shifts are indeed pathlength-independent, thus demonstrating that our presented methodology could be readily extended to other high-resolution IMS-MS platforms. These results are the first characterization of conformers using mass distribution-based IMS-MS shifts, as well as the first use of a commercial cIMS-MS platform to characterize isomers via their mass distribution-based shifts. We anticipate that our methodology will have broad applicability for biological analytes and that mass distribution-based shifts could potentially act as an added dimension of analysis in existing IMS-MS workflows in omics-based research. Specifically, we envision that the development of a database of these mass distribution-based shifts could, for example, enable the identification of unknown metabolites in complex matrices.
In recent years, ion mobility spectrometry-mass spectrometry (IMS-MS) has advanced the field of omics-based research, especially with the development of high-resolution platforms; however, these ...separations have generally been qualitative in nature. The rotationally averaged ion neutral collision cross section (CCS) is one of the only quantitative metrics available for aiding in characterizing biomolecules in IMS-MS. However, determining the CCS of an ion for multipass IMS systems, such as in cyclic ion mobility-mass spectrometry (cIMS-MS) and structures for lossless ion manipulations, has been challenging due to the lack of methods available for calculating CCS when more than a single pass is required for separation as well as the laborious nature of requiring calibrants and unknown compounds to be subjected to identical number of passes, which may not be possible in certain instances because of peak splitting, high levels of diffusion, etc. Herein, we present a general method that uses average ion velocities for calculating CCS values in cIMS-MS-based separations. Initially, we developed calibration curves using common CCS calibrants i.e., tetra-alkylammonium salts, polyalanine, and hexakis(fluoroalkoxy)phosphazines at different traveling wave (TW) conditions and the calculated cIMS CCS values were within ∼1% error or less compared to previously established drift tube IMS CCS measurements. Since it has been established that glycans can split into their α/β anomers, we utilized this method for two glycan species, 2α-mannobiose and melibiose. Both glycans were analyzed at the same TW conditions as the calibrants, and we observed anomer splitting at pathlengths of 20 m for 2α-mannobiose and 40 m for melibiose and thus assigned two unique CCS values for each glycan, which is the first time this has ever been done. We have demonstrated that the use of average ion velocities is a robust approach for obtaining CCS values with good agreement to CCS measurements from the previous literature and anticipate that this methodology can be applied to any IMS-MS platform that utilizes multipass separations. Our future work aims to incorporate this methodology for the development of a high-resolution CCS database to aid in the characterization of human milk oligosaccharides.
Herein, we introduce a two-dimensional strategy to better characterize carbohydrate isomers. In a single experiment, we can derive cyclic ion mobility-mass spectrometry (cIMS-MS)-based collision ...cross-section (CCS) values in conjunction with measuring isotopic shifts through the relative arrival times of light and heavy isotopologues. These isotopic shifts were introduced by permethylating carbohydrates with either light, CH3, or heavy, CD3, labels at every available hydroxyl group to generate a light/heavy pair of isotopologues for every individual species analyzed. We observed that our calculated CCS values, which were exclusively measured for the light isotopologues, were orthogonal to our measured isotopic shifts (i.e., relative arrival time values between heavy and light permethylated isotopologues). Our permethylation-induced isotopic shifts scaled well with increasing molecular weight, up to ∼m/z 1300, expanding the analysis of isotopic shifts to molecules 3–4 times as large as those previously studied. Our presented use of coupling CCS values with the measurement of isotopic shifts in a single cIMS-MS experiment is a proof-of-concept demonstration that our two-dimensional approach can improve the characterization of challenging isomeric carbohydrates. We envision that our presented 2D approach will have broad utility for varying molecular classes as well as being amenable to many forms of derivatization.
Lipids are an important class of molecules involved in various biological functions but remain difficult to characterize through mass-spectrometry-based methods because of their many possible ...isomers. Glycolipids, specifically, play important roles in cell signaling but display an even greater level of isomeric heterogeneity as compared to other lipid classes stemming from the introduction of a carbohydrate and its corresponding linkage position and α/β anomericity at the headgroup. While liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) remains the gold standard technique in lipidomics, it is still unable to characterize all isomeric species, thus presenting the need for new, orthogonal, methodologies. Ion mobility spectrometry–mass spectrometry (IMS-MS) can provide an additional dimension of information that supplements LC-MS/MS workflows, but has seen little use for glycolipid analyses. Herein, we present an analytical toolbox that enables the characterization of various glycolipid isomer sets using high-resolution cyclic ion mobility separations coupled with mass spectrometry (cIMS-MS). Specifically, we utilized a combination of both permethylation and metal adduction to fully resolve isomeric sphingolipids and ceramides with our cIMS-MS platform. We also introduce a new metric that can enable comparing peak-to-peak resolution across varying cIMS-MS pathlengths. Overall, we envision that our presented methodologies are highly amenable to existing LC-MS/MS-based workflows and can also have broad utility toward other omics-based analyses.
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