Homemade Capillary Electrophoresis Coupled to a Mass Spectrometer

Abstract

A system was developed in our laboratory to couple capillary electrophoresis with mass spectrometry. The capillary electrophoresis system was equipped with a high voltage supply, and a microcontroller with assembly language programming was developed for the computational control of the system. The MS system was a commercial Thermo Finningan LCQ ion trap mass spectrometer. The robustness of the coupled system was evaluated using standard protein samples (lysozyme, aprotinin, and bovine albumin) and tryptic digests of lysozyme. The system showed positive results in terms of robustness, allowing for the separation of digested proteins and the identification of 33% of the total amino acids in a protein (6 of the 18 expected peptides). The limit of detection was in the order of 1 picomole (signal-to-noise ratio), which was considered satisfactory for this system. The system shows high versatility in tandem coupling and combinations with other analytical procedures.

Recent developments in capillary and microchip electroseparations of peptides (2013–middle 2015)

“…The home‐made CE analyzer coupled with sheath‐liquid ESI interface to commercial Thermo Finnigan LCQ ion trap mass spectrometer provided a robust system for peptide and protein analysis with ca . 1 pmol LODs .…”

Recent developments and applications of capillary and microchip electrophoresis in proteomic and peptidomic analyses

“…A home‐made CE–MS system using commercial Thermo Finningan LCQ ion trap mass spectrometer was proposed by de Moraes et al. . Standard protein samples (lysozyme, aprotinin, BSA) were analyzed with this instrument using coaxial sheath flow interface.…”