Modification of Biological Molecules

Biomolecules are typically measured as multiply charged ions with MS, requiring post-processing to convert the measured m/z into the original mass through an iterative, typically nonlinear, and often ill-understood process involving trial values for the original mass.  Recognizing that MS measures not just single masses but entire distributions of all relevant masses and their abundances, we propose a different approach by eliminating the error-and artifact-prone original mass estimation step from the process altogether while achieving biomolecule identification and relative quantitation through full spectral calibration and analysis. This new approach was tested here with synthetic RNA molecules measured from a higher resolution LC-TOF and compared to unit resolution single quadrupole LC-MS for the identification and relative quantitation of RNA molecules and their modifications.  Accurate identification of RNA molecules, their fragments, and modifications are of great scientific and therapeutic importance.

Please find our additional resources below: