The effectiveness of the supercharging reagents m-nitrobenzyl alcohol (m-NBA) and propylene carbonate at producing highly charged protein ions in electrospray ionization is compared. Addition of 5% ...m-NBA or 15% propylene carbonate increases the average charge of three proteins by ∼21% or ∼23%, respectively, when these ions are formed from denaturing solutions (water/methanol/acetic acid). These results indicate that both reagents are nearly equally effective at supercharging when used at their optimum concentrations. A narrowing of the charge state distribution occurs with both reagents, although this effect is greater for propylene carbonate. Focusing the ion signal into fewer charge states has the advantage of improving sensitivity. The maximum charge state of ubiquitin formed with propylene carbonate is 21+, four charges higher than previously reported. Up to nearly 30% of all residues in a protein can be charged, and the collisional cross sections of the most highly charged ions of both ubiquitin and cytochrome c formed with these supercharging reagents were measured for the first time and found to be similar to those calculated for theoretical highly extended, linear or near-linear conformations. Under native supercharging conditions, m-NBA is significantly more effective at producing high charge states than propylene carbonate.
To understand environmental causes of disease, unbiased methods are needed to characterize the human exposome, which represents all toxicants to which people are exposed from both exogenous and ...endogenous sources. Because they directly modify DNA and important proteins, reactive electrophiles are probably the most important constituents of the exposome. Exposures to reactive electrophiles can be characterized by measuring adducts from reactions between circulating electrophiles and blood nucleophiles. We define an ‘adductome’ as the totality of such adducts with a given nucleophilic target. Because of their greater abundance and residence times in human blood, adducts of hemoglobin (Hb) and human serum albumin (HSA) are preferable to those of DNA and glutathione for characterizing adductomes. In fact, the nucleophilic hotspot represented by the only free sulfhydryl group in HSA (HSA-Cys34) offers particular advantages for adductomic experiments. Although targeted adducts of HSA-Cys34 have been monitored for decades, an unbiased method has only recently been reported for visualizing the HSA-Cys34 ‘subadductome’. The method relies upon a novel mass spectrometry application, termed fixed-step selected reaction monitoring (FS-SRM), to profile Cys34 adducts in tryptic digests of HSA. Here, we selectively review the literature regarding the potential of adductomics to partially elucidate the human exposome, with particular attention to the HSA-Cys34 subadductome.
The sizes and shapes of nanoparticles play a critical role in their chemical and material properties. Common sizing methods based on light scattering or mobility lack individual particle specificity, ...and microscopy-based methods often require cumbersome sample preparation and image analysis. A promising alternative method for the rapid and accurate characterization of nanoparticle size is charge detection mass spectrometry (CDMS), an emerging technique that measures the masses of individual ions. A recently constructed CDMS instrument designed specifically for high acquisition speed, efficiency, and accuracy is described. This instrument does not rely on an ion energy filter or estimates of ion energy that have been previously required for mass determination, but instead uses direct, in situ measurements. A standardized sample of ∼100 nm diameter polystyrene nanoparticles and ∼50 nm polystyrene nanoparticles with amine-functionalized surfaces are characterized using CDMS and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Individual nanoparticle masses measured by CDMS are transformed to diameters, and these size distributions are in close agreement with distributions measured by TEM. CDMS analysis also reveals dimerization of ∼100 nm nanoparticles in solution that cannot be determined by TEM due to the tendency of nanoparticles to agglomerate when dried onto a surface. Comparing the acquisition and analysis times of CDMS and TEM shows particle sizing rates up to ∼80× faster are possible using CDMS, even when samples ∼50× more dilute were used. The combination of both high-accuracy individual nanoparticle measurements and fast acquisition rates by CDMS represents an important advance in nanoparticle analysis capabilities.
The structures of isolated alkaline earth metal cationized amino acids are investigated using infrared multiple photon dissociation (IRMPD) spectroscopy and theory. These results indicate that ...arginine, glutamine, proline, serine, and valine all adopt zwitterionic structures when complexed with divalent barium. The IRMPD spectra for these ions exhibit bands assigned to carboxylate stretching modes, spectral signatures for zwitterionic amino acids, and lack bands attributable to the carbonyl stretch of a carboxylic acid functional group. Structural and spectral assignments are strengthened through comparisons with absorbance spectra calculated for low-energy structures and the IRMPD spectra of analogous ions containing monovalent alkali metals. Many bands are significantly red-shifted from the corresponding bands for amino acids complexed with monovalent metal ions, owing to increased charge transfer to divalent metal ions. The IRMPD spectra of arginine complexed with divalent strontium and barium are very similar and indicate that arginine adopts a zwitterionic form in both ions. Calculations indicate that nonzwitterionic forms of arginine are lowest in free energy in complexes with smaller alkaline earth metal cations and that zwitterionic forms are preferentially stabilized with increasing metal ion size. B3LYP and MP2 calculations indicate that zwitterionic forms of arginine are lowest in free energy for M = Ca, Sr, and Ba.
Effects of electrospray voltage on cluster size and abundance formed from aqueous CsI were investigated with emitter tip diameters between 260 ± 7 nm and 2.45 ± 0.30 μm. Cluster size increases with ...increasing voltage, increasing solution concentration and increasing emitter diameter consistent with formation of larger initial droplet sizes. For emitters with tip diameters above ∼1 μm, varying the voltage either up or down leads to reproducible voltage-dependent extents of cluster formation. In contrast, higher voltages with submicron diameter emitters can lead to only Cs+ and Cs(H2O)+ and no clusters. This change in ion formation reproducibly occurs at spray potentials >1.3 kV for 260 nm emitters and appears to be induced by a corona discharge and material build-up at the emitter tip. Under conditions where abundant Cs+ is observed and no clusters are formed, ions such as K+ and Cu1+ are also observed but ions with more negative solvation energies, such as Ba2+, are not. Similarly, ions from bradykinin and ubiquitin are observed predischarge but not post discharge. Ions with more positive solvation energies can desorb directly from the air–water interface that is created at the tip of these emitters, whereas ions with more negative solvation energies as well as peptide and protein ions do not. These results indicate that ion desorption directly from solution can occur, and similar experiments with even smaller emitters may lead to new insights into ion formation in electrospray ionization.
Instrumental resolution of Fourier transform-charge detection mass spectrometry instruments with electrostatic ion trap detection of individual ions depends on the precision with which ion energy is ...determined. Energy can be selected using ion optic filters or from harmonic amplitude ratios (HARs) that provide Fellgett’s advantage and eliminate the necessity of ion transmission loss to improve resolution. Unlike the ion energy-filtering method, the resolution of the HAR method increases with charge (improved S/N) and thus with mass. An analysis of the HAR method with current instrumentation indicates that higher resolution can be obtained with the HAR method than the best resolution demonstrated for instruments with energy-selective optics for ions in the low MDa range and above. However, this gain is typically unrealized because the resolution obtainable with molecular systems in this mass range is limited by sample heterogeneity. This phenomenon is illustrated with both tobacco mosaic virus (0.6–2.7 MDa) and AAV9 (3.7–4.7 MDa) samples where mass spectral resolution is limited by the sample, including salt adducts, and not by instrument resolution. Nevertheless, the ratio of full to empty AAV9 capsids and the included genome mass can be accurately obtained in a few minutes from 1× PBS buffer solution and an elution buffer containing 300+ mM nonvolatile content despite extensive adduction and lower resolution. Empty and full capsids adduct similarly indicating that salts encrust the complexes during late stages of droplet evaporation and that mass shifts can be calibrated in order to obtain accurate analyte masses even from highly salty solutions.
The effectiveness of two new supercharging reagents for producing highly charged ions by electrospray ionization (ESI) from aqueous solutions in which proteins have native structures and reactivities ...were investigated. In aqueous solution, 2-thiophenone and 4-hydroxymethyl-1,3-dioxolan-2-one (HD) at a concentration of 2% by volume can increase the average charge of cytochrome c and myoglobin by up to 163%, resulting in even higher charge states than those that are produced from water/methanol/acid solutions in which these proteins are denatured. The greatest extent of supercharging occurs in pure water, but these supercharging reagents are also highly effective in aqueous solutions containing 200 mM ammonium acetate buffer commonly used in native mass spectrometry (MS). These reagents are less effective supercharging reagents than m-nitrobenzyl alcohol (m-NBA) and propylene carbonate (PC) when ions are formed from water/methanol/acid. The extent to which loss of the heme group from myoglobin occurs is related to the extent of supercharging. Results from guanidine melts of cytochrome c monitored with tryptophan fluorescence show that the supercharging reagents PC, sulfolane and HD are effective chemical denaturants in solution. These results provide additional evidence for the role of protein structural changes in the electrospray droplet as the primary mechanism for supercharging with these reagents in native MS. These results also demonstrate that for at least some proteins, the formation of highly charged ions from native MS is no longer a significant barrier for obtaining structural information using conventional tandem MS methods.
The encapsulation of enzymes and other proteins within a proteinaceous shell has been observed in many bacteria and archaea, but the function and utility of many such compartments are enigmatic. ...Efforts to study these functions have been complicated by the size and complexity of traditional protein compartments. One potential system for investigating the effect of compartmentalization is encapsulin, a large and newly discovered class of protein shells that are typically composed of two proteins: a protomer that assembles into the icosahedral shell and a cargo protein packaged inside. Encapsulins are some of the simplest known protein shell systems and readily self-assemble in vivo. Systematic characterization of the effects of compartmentalization requires the ability to load a wide range of cargo proteins. Here, we demonstrate that foreign cargo can be loaded into the encapsulin from Thermotoga maritima both in vivo and in vitro by fusion of the cargo protein with a short C-terminal peptide present in the native cargo. To facilitate biochemical characterization, we also develop a simple and rapid purification protocol and demonstrate the thermal and pH stability of the shell. Efforts to study the biophysical effects of protein encapsulation have been problematic in complex compartments, but the simplicity of assembling and loading encapsulin makes it an ideal system for future experiments exploring the effects of encapsulation on proteins.
The formation of high charge-state protein ions with nanoelectrospray ionization (nESI) from purely aqueous ammonium bicarbonate solutions at neutral pH, where the proteins have native or native-like ...conformations prior to ESI droplet formation, is demonstrated. This “electrothermal” supercharging method depends on the temperature of the instrument entrance capillary, the nESI spray potential, and the solution ionic strength and buffer, although other factors almost certainly contribute. Mass spectra obtained with electrothermal supercharging appear similar to those obtained from denaturing solutions where charging beyond the total number of basic sites can be achieved. For example, a 17+ ion of bovine ubiquitin was formed by nESI of a 100 mM ammonium bicarbonate, pH 7.0, solution, which is three more charges than the total number of basic amino acids plus the N-terminus. Heating of the ESI droplets in the vacuum/atmosphere interface and the concomitant denaturation of the protein in the ESI droplets prior to ion formation appears to be the primary origin of the very high charge-state ions formed from these purely aqueous, buffered solutions. nESI mass spectra resembling those obtained under traditional native or denaturing conditions can be reversibly obtained simply by toggling the spray voltage between low and high values.
The role of water in stabilizing sites of protonation in small gaseous ions is investigated using electrospray ionization (ESI) coupled with infrared photodissociation spectroscopy and computational ...chemistry. Protonation of p-aminobenzoic acid (PABA) and p-aminobenzoic acid methyl ester (PABAOMe) occurs at the carbonyl oxygen atom both in isolation and when one water molecule is attached. However, protonation occurs at the amine nitrogen atom, which is the most favorable site in aqueous solution, for PABAOMeH+·(H2O)3 and for a significant fraction of PABAH+·(H2O)6. Fewer water molecules are necessary to stabilize the solution-phase isomer of PABAOMeH+ (3) than for PABAH+ (≥6), indicating that the favorable hydrogen bonding in PABAH+ is a more important factor than the higher gas-phase basicity of PABAOMeH+ in stabilizing protonation at the carbonyl oxygen atom. Relative Gibbs free energies (133 K) calculated using B3LYP and MP2 with the 6-311++G** basis set were significantly different from each other, and both are in poor agreement with results from the experiments. ωB97X-D/6-311++G**, which includes empirical dispersion corrections, gave results that were most consistent with the experimental data. The relative stabilities of protonating at the carbonyl oxygen atom for PABAH+·(H2O)0–6 and PABAOMeH+·(H2O)0–2 can be rationalized by resonance delocalization. These findings provide valuable insights into the solvent interactions that stabilize the location of a charge site and the structural transitions that can occur during the ESI desolvation process.
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