Studies on Fragmentation of Peptide by Nano-electrospray Ionization Fourier Transform Ion Cyclotron Resonance Multi-stage Tandem Mass Spectrometry

The sequence analysis of peptides was performed by nano-electrospray ionization Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance tandem mass spectrometry(Nano-ESI-FT-ICR-MS(n)) and several peptides were chosen as examples. With the aid of the collision induced dissociation(CID), FT-ICR provides not only precise mass/charge ratio; but also structure information of the selected peptides. The fragment ions were identified according to the observed molecular weights and peptide sequence was determined successfully. So Nano-ESI-FT-ICR-MS(n) is a useful tool for identification of the amino acid sequence of peptides with high confidence. Besides, a pathway for the dehydration of y ions without amino acids containing carboxylic acid under sustained off-resonance irradiation collision-induced dissociation(SORI-CID) condition was proposed.