A new sample ionization technique, atmospheric pressure matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (AP MALDI), was coupled with a commercial ion trap mass spectrometer. This configuration enables the application-specific selection of external atmospheric ionization sources: the electrospray/APCI (commercially available) and AP MALDI (built in-house), which can be readily interchanged within mi...

An atmospheric pressure matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (AP MALDI) source coupled to Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (FT ICR MS) under UV laser and solid matrix conditions has been demonstrated to analyze a variety of labile oligosaccharides including O-linked and N-linked complex glycans released from glycoproteins. Spectra were acquired by both AP MALDI...

This study examines the features and limitations of direct Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption-Ionisation (MALDI) mass-spectrometry profiling of bacterial cells for investigating a microbial population. The optimal laboratory protocol, including crude bacteria lyses by a solution of 50% acetonitrile, 2.5% trifluoroacetic acid, and using α-cyano-4-hydroxy cinnamic acid as the MALDI matrix, has been...

Recent EU directives and regulations for quality control and authentication of food products have prompted the development of new methods for large-scale tests to ensure the protection of consumers. In view of this, an innovative method based on MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry has been developed and successfully applied to fish authentication. Highly specific mass spectrometric profiles from 25 dif...

Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) has improved over the years and is increasingly being used for biomarker discovery directly from human tissue sections. State-of-the-art technology currently enables a resolution down to 20 µm. MSI therefore allows the correlation of spatial and temporal protein expression profiles with distinct morphological fe...

Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionisation spiral orbit-type time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-SpiralTOF) can analyse lipid profiles and characterise lipid structure. Imaging mass spectrometry (IMS) also provides distribution maps of selected m/z values. Here, we investigated triacylglycerol (TG) structure and distribution using these technologies to estimate mouse fatty liver. The distr...

Conventional DNA sequencing is based on gel electrophoretic separation of the sequencing products. Gel casting and electrophoresis are the time limiting steps, and the gel separation is occasionally imperfect due to aberrant mobility of certain fragments, leading to erroneous sequence determination. Furthermore, illegitimately terminated products frequently cannot be distinguished from correctl...