SGMS Meeting 2000

Protein Identification using a MALDI Qstar Pulsar Instrument

Stefan König, Patricia Illisiu, Jörn Krause
Applied Biosystems Switzerland, CH-6343 Rotkreuz

In the last few years quadrupole time-of-flight instruments have rapidly become the standard for sensitive sequencing in proteomic research when using electrospray ionization. Very recently MALDI has also been coupled successfully to this type of instruments. With this new combination, high throughput identification of peptides and proteins has become accessible.

The high mass resolution and the high mass accuracy of these instruments in both MS and MS/MS modes allow identification of a protein either by peptide mass finger-printing of the protein digest or from tandem mass spectra acquired by collision-induced dissociation of individual peptide precursors.

In this paper we will present some recent applications developed on our new MALDI Qstar Pulsar instrument focused on the research in proteomics. Several peptides and proteins were applied onto the MALDI target in the low femtomol level range and sequenced in order to illustrate the performance of our instrument.

In essence, the presented data will demonstrate that the combination of a hybrid instrument and MALDI ion source is a very powerful tool in the proteomic research.

References:

A. V. Loboda, A. N. Krutchinsky, M. Bromirski, W. Ens, K. G. Standing, RCM, 14, 1047-1057 (2000)

A. Shevchenko, A. Loboda, A. Shevchenko, W. Ens, K. G. Standing, Anal. Chem., 72, 2132-2141 (2000)