Department of Chemistry, University of California-Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
J Am Soc Mass Spectrom. 2012 Feb;23(2):191-200. doi: 10.1007/s13361-011-0301-y. Epub 2011 Dec 13.
The effects of aqueous solution supercharging on the solution- and gas-phase structures of two protein complexes were investigated using traveling-wave ion mobility-mass spectrometry (TWIMS-MS). Low initial concentrations of m-nitrobenzyl alcohol (m-NBA) in the electrospray ionization (ESI) solution can effectively increase the charge of concanavalin A dimers and tetramers, but at higher m-NBA concentrations, the increases in charge are accompanied by solution-phase dissociation of the dimers and up to a ~22% increase in the collision cross section (CCS) of the tetramers. With just 0.8% m-NBA added to the ESI solution of a ~630 kDa anthrax toxin octamer complex, the average charge is increased by only ~4% compared with the "native" complex, but it is sufficiently destabilized so that extensive gas-phase fragmentation occurs in the relatively high pressure regions of the TWIMS device. Anthrax toxin complexes exist in either a prechannel or a transmembrane channel state. With m-NBA, the prechannel state of the complex has the same CCS/charge ratio in the gas phase as the transmembrane channel state of the same complex formed without m-NBA, yet undergoes extensive dissociation, indicating that destabilization from supercharging occurs in the ESI droplet prior to ion formation and is not a result of Coulombic destabilization in the gas phase as a result of higher charging. These results demonstrate that the supercharging of large protein complexes is the result of conformational changes induced by the reagents in the ESI droplets, where enrichment of the supercharging reagent during droplet evaporation occurs.
采用行进波离子淌度-质谱联用技术(TWIMS-MS)研究了水溶液荷电对两种蛋白质复合物的溶液相和气相结构的影响。电喷雾电离(ESI)溶液中低初始浓度的间硝基苄醇(m-NBA)可以有效地增加伴刀豆球蛋白 A 二聚体和四聚体的电荷,但在较高的 m-NBA 浓度下,电荷的增加伴随着二聚体的溶液相解离,以及四聚体的碰撞截面(CCS)增加约 22%。在 ~630 kDa 的炭疽毒素八聚体复合物的 ESI 溶液中加入仅 0.8%的 m-NBA,与“天然”复合物相比,平均电荷仅增加约 4%,但它已被充分去稳定,以致在 TWIMS 装置的相对高压区发生广泛的气相碎裂。炭疽毒素复合物以预通道或跨膜通道状态存在。加入 m-NBA 后,复合物的预通道状态在气相中的 CCS/电荷比与没有 m-NBA 形成的相同复合物的跨膜通道状态相同,但经历了广泛的解离,这表明在离子形成之前,ESI 液滴中的荷电去稳定发生,而不是由于更高的充电导致气相中的库仑去稳定。这些结果表明,大蛋白质复合物的荷电是 ESI 液滴中试剂诱导的构象变化的结果,其中在液滴蒸发过程中,荷电试剂富集。