INTEGRATION OF DIRECT BINDING SENSORS WITH MASS SPECTROMETRY FOR FUNCTIONAL AND STRUCTURAL CHARACTERIZATION OF MOLECULES

摘要

The invention provides methods for the detection, quantification, identification and structural analysis of one or more molecules. Mass spectrometry (MS) is not a universal detector as all molecules do not ionize equally well leading to poor signal to quantity information. MS can be optimized to identify the specific mass of a binding component when the presence of a material is known. Colorimetric resonant reflectance optical sensors provide a universal mass detector in that nearly all biological masses give equally proportional signals. The combined methods allow selection and or detection with quantification of all masses binding to the sensor with the ability to identify specific molecules by their individual masses and structure analyses.