Surface-Induced Dissociation Mass Spectra as a Tool for Distinguishing Different Structural Forms of Gas-Phase Multimeric Protein Complexes.

One attractive feature of ion mobility mass spectrometry (IM-MS) lies in its ability to provide experimental collision cross section (CCS) measurements, which can be used to distinguish different conformations that a protein complex may adopt during its gas-phase unfolding. However, CCS values alone give no detailed information on subunit structure within the complex. Consequently, structural characterization typically requires molecular modeling, which can have uncertainties without experimental support. One method of obtaining direct experimental evidence on the structures of these intermediates is utilizing gas-phase activation techniques that can effectively dissociate the complexes into substructures while preserving the native topological information. The most commonly used activation method, collision-induced dissociation (CID) with low-mass target gases, typically leads to unfolding of monomers of a protein complex. Here, we describe a method that couples IM-MS and surface-induced dissociation (SI...