Structural analysis of a small molecule using JMS-S3000 "SpiralTOF™-plus 2.0" ー MS/MS measurement of a photodegradation product of reserpine
MSTips No. 365
High mass-resolution MALDI-TOFMS can determine the elemental compositions of target compounds from their measured accurate masses. MS/MS measurement is effective in elucidating the chemical structure, which is difficult to infer from accurate mass information. MS/MS measurement using JMS-S3000 "SpiralTOF™-plus 2.0" with a TOF-TOF option can detect fragment ions generated by high-energy collision-induced dissociation(HE-CID). HE-CID is a technique of fragmenting precursor ions by a single collision. It is known to provide more structural information than low-energy collision-induced dissociation, which fragments precursor ions by multiple collisions. On the other hand, since MALDI-TOFMS is difficult to connect online with pre-separation methods such as liquid chromatography, the target compounds must be separated by only their masses. High precursor ion selectivity is required to obtain accurate structural information for components that are close in their masses. SpiralTOF™-plus 2.0 with TOF-TOF option can achieve high precursor ion selectivity due to the long flight path of the spiral ion optics used in the 1st TOFMS. In this application note, we report the structural elucidation of a photodegradation product of reserpine as an example of structural analysis of a component close to a possible interference in mass by MS/MS measurement using the SpiralTOF™-plus 2.0 with TOF-TOF option.