A general purpose MALDI matrix for the analyses of small organic, peptide and protein molecules

Abstract

Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry (MALDI MS) has been widely applied for the analysis of large biomolecules. The emergence of inorganic material substrates and new organic matrices extend the use...

A systematic assessment of matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) application for rapid identification of pathogenic microbes that affect food crops: delivered and future deliverables

“…In addition to protein identication, MALDI MS has also been used for the analysis of other biomolecules such as nucleic acids, polysaccharides, lipids, and small organic compounds from all forms of life. [4][5][6][7][9][10][11][12][13][14] As in the case of plant and animal protein analysis, protein preparation for the iden-tication of microbes, especially for the detection of cellular proteins, require breaking of cell wall via sonication/extraction using solvent or buffer system prior to MALDI MS analysis. However, MALDI MS of microbial extracellular protein analysis involves using salt/solvents and purication using chromatographic/gel-based methods.…”

“…11,12 Further research has also been extended to small molecule analysis. 13,14 Apart from these, in medical sciences, MALDI MS has been employed to unravel the molecular dysfunctions in human diseases i.e., cancer, 15 cardiovascular, 16 and liver-associated diseases 17 utilizing different sample processing protocols.…”

MALDI-TOF Mass Spectrometry in Clinical Analysis and Research

“…MALDI-TOF MS has been widely applied for analyzing many kinds of large molecules as described above. The application of it for the analysis of small molecules is mostly limited by the selection of a suitable matrix . Conventional matrices used for the analysis of large molecules are often unsuitable for the analysis of low molecular weight compounds ( m / z < 1000 Da) mainly due to the matrix background interference, ion suppression, and nonuniformity of crystallization by traditional organic matrices.…”

“…The application of it for the analysis of small molecules is mostly limited by the selection of a suitable matrix. 101 Conventional matrices used for the analysis of large molecules are often unsuitable for the analysis of low molecular weight compounds (m/z < 1000 Da) mainly due to the matrix background interference, ion suppression, and nonuniformity of crystallization by traditional organic matrices. For the analysis of small molecules, many inorganic materials have been developed to assist the ionization process, such as nanoparticles (NPs) and nanotubes.…”

Applications of MALDI-MS/MS-Based Proteomics in Biomedical Research

“…Since their discovery, both ESI and MALDI are the commonly used ionization methods for MS-based proteomic analysis, and the resulting data suggests a great deal of complementarity between ESI-MS and MALDI-MS [ 5 ]. MALDI is a “soft ionization” technique that produces rapid and effective ionization of a wide range of biomolecules (amino acids [ 6 ], peptides [ 5 ], proteins [ 7 ], oligonucleotides [ 8 ], oligosaccharides [ 9 ], and other organic molecules, such as small drugs [ 10 ]/metabolites [ 11 ] or large synthetic polymers [ 12 ]) using a matrix to absorb laser energy to produce ions with minimal fragmentation. The distinction between MALDI and ESI ionization sources is that the former produces low charged ions (singly and doubly protonated ions), which allows for easy molecular mass determination for most biomolecules [ 13 ] and easy interpretation of data comparative to ESI-MS [ 14 ].…”