title: Identification of metal species by ESI-MS/MS through release of free metals from the corresponding metal-ligand complexes.
abstract: Electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) is used to analyze metal species in a variety of samples. Here, we describe an application for identifying metal species by tandem mass spectrometry (ESI-MS/MS) with the release of free metals from the corresponding metal-ligand complexes. The MS/MS data were used to elucidate the possible fragmentation pathways of different metal-deoxymugineic acid (-DMA) and metal-nicotianamine (-NA) complexes and select the product ions with highest abundance that may be useful for quantitative multiple reaction monitoring. This method can be used for identifying different metal-ligand complexes, especially for metal species whose mass spectra peaks are clustered close together. Different metal-DMA/NA complexes were simultaneously identified under different physiological pH conditions with this method. We further demonstrated the application of the technique for different plant samples and with different MS instruments.
authors.affiliation: Agricultural Biotechnology Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taipei, 11529 Taiwan.
authors.forename: Munkhtsetseg
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tsednee
authors.affiliation: Agricultural Biotechnology Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taipei, 11529 Taiwan.
authors.forename: Yu-Chen
authors.initials: YC
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.affiliation: Agricultural Biotechnology Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taipei, 11529 Taiwan.
authors.forename: Yet-Ran
authors.initials: YR
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Agricultural Biotechnology Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taipei, 11529 Taiwan.
authors.forename: Kuo-Chen
authors.initials: KC
authors.lastname: Yeh