The use of flower-like gold nanoparticles in time-of-flight mass spectrometry
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| Year of publication | 2015 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
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| Description | Various types of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) represent promising tools in many biomedical applications.[1-2] Here we report the first use of flower-like (FL) AuNPs as a mediator enhancing ionization in mass spectrometry (MS) of biomolecules. The main objective was to determine the effect of FL AuNPs on the ionization of biomolecules by surface assisted and matrix assisted laser desorption ionization (SALDI and MALDI) MS with time-of-flight analyzer. FL AuNPs alone or combined with cyano-4-hydroxycinnamic acid (CHCA) for MS measurement of peptides (500-3 500 m/z) were used. The comparison with classical CHCA matrix shows that FL AuNPs increase the ionization (~ 7.5 ×) of peptides both alone and in combination with CHCA matrix. For ionization of higher mass peptides/proteins and those from mouse embryonic fibroblast (MEF) cells, FL AuNPs combined with CHCA and sinapinic acid (SA) were used. The signal of peptide/protein peaks (3 600–17 000 m/z) was up to 2 × higher with using FL AuNPs enriched CHCA matrix than using conventional CHCA matrix. The signal of MEF cells profile peaks (4 000–20 000 m/z) was 2 × higher when using FL AuNPs combined with sinapinic acid (SA) as compared to SA matrix alone. In addition, gold clusters generated from FL AuNPs provide suitable internal calibration standard for MS analysis of peptides. In conclusion, FL AuNPs are capable of efficient improving of MS detection of peptides/proteins and their use may contribute to mass spectrometry based proteomics of biomolecules. |
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