Slow-Equilibration Approximation in Kinetic Size Exclusion Chromatography.

Kinetic size exclusion chromatography with mass spectrometry detection (KSEC-MS) is a solution-based label-free approach for studying kinetics of reversible binding of a small molecule to a protein. Extraction of kinetic data from KSEC-MS chromatograms is greatly complicated by the lack of separation between the protein and protein-small molecule complex. As a result, a sophisticated time-consuming numerical approach was used for the determination of rate constants in the proof-of-principle works on KSEC-MS. Here, we suggest the first non-numerical (analytical) approach for finding rate constants of protein-small molecule interaction from KSEC-MS data. The approach is based on the slow-equilibration approximation, which is applicable to KSEC-MS chromatograms that reveal two peaks. The analysis of errors shows that the slow-equilibration approximation guarantees that the errors in the rate constants are below 20% if the ratio between the characteristic separation and equilibration times does not exceed 0.1. The latter condition can typically be satisfied for specific interactions such as receptor-ligand or protein-drug. The suggested analytical solution equips analytical scientists with a simple and fast tool for processing KSEC-MS data. Moreover, a similar approach can be potentially developed for kinetic analysis of protein-small molecule binding by other kinetic-separation methods such as nonequilibrium capillary electrophoresis of equilibrium mixtures (NECEEM).