Biomolecular Clusters Distribution up to Mega Dalton Region Using MALDI-Quadrupole Ion Trap Mass Spectrometer

• Main Authors: Yung-Kun Chuang, Szu-Hsueh Lai, Jung-Lee Lin, Chung-Hsuan Chen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2018-09-01
• Series: International Journal of Molecular Sciences
• Subjects: MALDI; cytochrome c; bovine serum albumin (BSA); large clusters; quantitative distribution
• Online Access: http://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/19/9/2789

We present the first report on complete cluster distributions of cytochrome c (molecular weight of 12.4 kDa) and bovine serum albumin ((BSA), molecular weight of 66.4 kDa) with mass-to-charge ratio (m/z) reaching 350,000 and 1,400,000, respectively, by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI). Large cluster distributions of the analytes were measured by our homemade frequency-scanned quadrupole ion trap (QIT) mass spectrometer with a charge detector. To our knowledge, we report the highest m/z clusters of these two biomolecules. The quantitative results indicate that large clusters ions of cytochrome c and BSA follow the power law (r2 > 0.99) with cluster size distribution, which provides experimental evidence for the laser ablation studies of MALDI.