Analysis of Post-translational Modifications using Electron Transfer Dissociation in Combination with a High Resolution Orbitrap Mass Analyzer

摘要

Addition of an ETD module to an LTQ Orbitrap XL mass spectrometer produces an instrument with an unprecedented range of fragmentation techniques capable of addressing the entire field of Life Science applications. More importantly, this expansion occurs without any noticeable performance reduction for any of these techniques. In the present work three different fragmentation techniques (CID, HCD and ETD) have been compared on the basis of their ability to analyze labile post translational modifications like phosphorylation. Compared to CID and HCD, ETD has a much higher probability for charged fragments to contain the intact phosphorylation group. Only the ETD technique allowed an unambiguous sequencing of the multiply phosphorylated peptides. Therefore ETD is the most suitable fragmentation technique to investigate post translational modifications.