GAS-PHASE ION CHEMISTRY AND ION TRAP METHODOLOGIES FOR TRANSMETALATION REACTIONS AND IN-DEPTH LIPID ANALYSIS

Originating from J. J. Thomsons original work and the development of electrospray ionization (ESI) by John B. Fenn, mass spectrometry offers a versatile analytical tool to measure beyond an ion’s m/z, especially for biomolecules. Gas-phase ion/ion reactions within a mass spectrometer offers an attractive approach to study biomolecules as they take place on the millisecond and sub millisecond time scale, have high efficiency, allow oppositely charged ions to interact with each other in a controlled manner, and a allows for selection of each reactant prior to the reaction via ion isolation. This can be used to probe gas-phase chemistry that can reflect reactions in solution, however gas-phase reactions have no solvent effects and happen faster, making it a simpler experiment. Here, a variety of gas-phase ion/ion reactions and ion trap methodologies are described to study mostly lipids with a minor amount of transmetalation at the beginning. First, a series of multivalent metals complexed to neutral ligands are demonstrated to form ion-pairs with tetraphenylborate anions via ion/ion reactions. The resulting products were subjected to collision induced activation (CID) to observe their involvement in transmetalation, complementary density functional theory (DFT) calculations are provided as well. Next, sequential ion/ion reactions were performed to convert isomeric phosphoinositol phosphates dianions to monocations to reveal structural characterization and isomeric differentiation utilizing tandem MS and dissociation kinetics. The following two chapters after, reports on complementary efforts to separate lipids in the gas-phase of different mass and charge but similar mass-to-charge (m/z) resulting in overlapping m/z signals. The first report demonstrates a physical approach where singly and double charged lipids are separated in space from each other, trapped simultaneously such that no information is lost. The second utilizes a lanthanide, Yb3+ trication complex that underwent ion/ion reactions with singly and ...