Gas-Phase Covalent Bond Formation via Nucleophilic Substitution: A Dissociation Kinetics Study of Leaving Groups, Isomeric R Groups, and Nucleophilic Sites.

Nucleophilic substitution covalent modification ion/ion reactions were carried out in a linear quadrupole ion trap between the doubly protonated peptides KGAILKGAILR, RARARAA, and RKRARAA and isomers of either singly deprotonated 3- or 4-sulfobenzoic acid (-SBA) esterified with either -hydroxysuccinimide (NHS) or 1-hydroxy-7-aza-benzotriazole (HOBt). The cation/anion attachment product, through which the covalent reaction occurs, was isolated and subjected to dipolar DC (DDC) activation to generate covalently modified product over the ranges of DDC activation energies and times. The resulting survival yields were used to determine reaction rates, and Tolmachev's effective ion temperature was used to extract Arrhenius and Eyring activation parameters. It was found that the kinetics determined under these conditions are highly sensitive to the identities and locations of the nucleophilic sites on the peptides, the leaving groups on the reagent, and the location of the attachment sites on the reagent and analyte. Depending upon the identity of the analyte/reagent combination, significant variations in activation energy or entropy (or both) were both found to underlie the measured rate differences. The determination of dissociation kinetics under DDC conditions and application of Tolmachev's effective ion temperature treatment enables unique insights into the dynamics of gas-phase covalent bond formation via ion/ion reactions.