Combined charged residue-field emission model of macromolecular electrospray ionization

Christopher J. Hogan, James A. Carroll, Henry W. Rohrs, Pratim Biswas, Michael L. Gross

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

141 Scopus citations

Abstract

The mechanism of the multiple charging of macromolecules in electrospray ionization (ESI) continues to inspire debate and controversy. Recently, we proposed that the number of charges on a macromolecule is determined by the emission of small charge carriers from macromolecule-containing nanodroplets and that, after solvent evaporation, the remaining charge is transferred to the macromolecule. In this study, we tested the applicability of this new theory for macromolecular, positive-ion ESI mass spectrometry by measuring the mean charge states and charge distributions of globular proteins under nondenaturing and denaturing conditions. Predictions of protein mean charge states for native state proteins are in excellent agreement with mass spectrometric measurements, giving strong credence to the proposed theory. Theoretical predictions are also in good agreement with mean charge states measured for proteins in basic solutions (pH = 11.5). For some proteins in acidic solutions (pH = 2.1), the measured mean charge states are anomalously higher than the Rayleigh limit of a water droplet with a volume equivalent to that of the protein. We propose that some macromolecules that are highly charged in solution may desorb from charged droplets of the same polarity in a similar manner to that whereby charge carriers emit from nanodroplets, leading to "supercharged" macromolecular ions. Examination of rate expressions for solvent evaporation and charge-carrier emission demonstrates that the newly proposed model for ESI is consistent with previously reported ion-emission kinetics. Overall, we obtained additional experimental evidence for the charge carrier emission model for macromolecular charging, suggesting opportunities for understanding and applying ESI-MS.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)369-377
Number of pages9
JournalAnalytical Chemistry
Volume81
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 1 2009

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We thank Hsiao-Lin Chen (Academic Sinica) and Je-Ning Tsai (Yuanpei Institute of Science and Technology) for technical assistance, and Rammohan V. Rao (Buck Institute for Age Research) for critically reading the manuscript. This work was supported by the ITRI Grant A311XS4150. M.Y.C. is a BMEC scientist at the ITRI.

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