title: Mobility of Proteins in Porous Substrates under Electrospray Ionization Conditions.
abstract: Proteins are important substances in living organisms and characterization of proteins is an indispensible part for protein study. Analysis of proteins using electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) with porous substrates was investigated in this study. The results revealed that the ionization process had two stages. At the first stage, mobility and resulting spectra of proteins were similar to those obtained with conventional capillary-based ESI-MS. At the second stage, hydrophobic-hydrophobic interactions between proteins and the tip surfaces played an important role in mobility and detectability of protein ions, which were size and shape dependent, and a linear relationship could be found between the peak area of selected ion chromatogram and the cross section of protein ions. Preparative separation of proteins could be achieved by collecting the proteins remained on the porous substrates. These results led us to propose that electrospray ionization from porous substrates offer a potential approach for analysis of proteins and investigation of protein structures and conformations.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory for Chirosciences, Food Safety and Technology Research Centre and Department of Applied Biology and Chemical Technology, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University , Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China.|State Key Laboratory of Chinese Medicine and Molecular Pharmacology (Incubation) and Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Food Biological Safety Control, Shenzhen Research Institute of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University , Shenzhen, 518057, China.
authors.forename: Bin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory for Chirosciences, Food Safety and Technology Research Centre and Department of Applied Biology and Chemical Technology, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University , Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China.|Key Laboratory of Natural Resources of Changbai Mountain and Functional Molecules (Yanbian University), Ministry of Education , Yanji, 133002, China.|State Key Laboratory of Chinese Medicine and Molecular Pharmacology (Incubation) and Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Food Biological Safety Control, Shenzhen Research Institute of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University , Shenzhen, 518057, China.
authors.forename: Zhong-Ping
authors.initials: ZP
authors.lastname: Yao
mesh_terms: D057927:Hydrophobic and Hydrophilic Interactions; D010316:Particle Size; D016062:Porosity; D011506:Proteins / Q000032:analysis*; D021241:Spectrometry, Mass, Electrospray Ionization; D013499:Surface Properties
chemical_list: D011506:Proteins