Evaluation of fast atom bombardment mass spectrometry for sequence determination of peptides

16 Synthetic tri- to hexapeptides and a number of unknown peptides isolated from degradations of a locust cuticle protein are analysed by fast atom bombardment mass spectrometry. The analysis includes on-probe acetylation of the sample. Molecular weight information is obtained for all the synthetic peptides and for most of the peptides of protein origin. The sequence information contained in the spectra is examined and the possibility of determining the amino acid sequence of unknown peptides is evaluated. It is concluded that sequencing of unknown peptides based on the fast atom bombardment spectra is difficult and normally only results in a partial sequence.