Potential use of LIAD time-of-flight mass spectrometry for the detection of biomolecules: An example of detecting nucleobases in DNA

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) carries the genetic information necessary for synthesis of RNA and proteins; it is a biological macromolecule essential development proper functioning living organisms composed nucleobases, deoxyribose, phosphate. The four nucleobases in DNA are adenine (AD), guanine (GU), thymine (TY), cytosine (CY). Abnormal concentrations these an organism have significant impact on disease diagnosis. Therefore, qualitative quantitative detection helpful to diagnose certain diseases. In this work, we report simultaneous determination purine (AD, GU) pyrimidine (TY, CY) using laser-induced acoustic desorption (LIAD) with electron ionization (EI)/time-of-flight mass spectrometry (TOFMS). (MW 120 Da) samples were used as model compounds assess sensitivity performance instrument. Its limits assessed LIAD/EI/MS method ∼0.5–1.2 pg under optimal conditions, their calibration curves exhibited good linearity (R2 = 0.98). LIAD/TOFMS was successfully applied AD, GU, TY, CY real samples. advantage technique simple, fast, without complex pre-treatment processes. addition, quartz-enhanced LIAD (QE-LIAD) source improve signal strength. biomolecules shows that QE-LIAD still “gentle” source.