Enantiomer Separation of Amino Acids by Complexation with Chiral Reference Compounds and High-Field Asymmetric Waveform Ion Mobility Spectrometry: Preliminary Results and Possible Limitations

Citations Over TimeTop 22% of 2007 papers

Abstract

We present a new method for separation of enantiomers with high-field asymmetric waveform ion mobility spectrometry (FAIMS), coupled to mass spectrometric detection. Upon addition of an appropriate chiral reference compound to the analyte solution and subsequent ionization of the solution by electrospray ionization, analyte enantiomers formed diastereomeric complexes, which were potentially separable by FAIMS. The methodology being developed is intended to be general, but here amino acid analytes are specifically considered. In the examples presented herein, six pairs of amino acid enantiomers were successfully separated as metal-bound trimeric complexes of the form [MII(L-Ref)2(D/L-A)-H]+, where MII is a divalent metal ion, L-Ref is an amino acid in its L form acting as chiral reference compound, and A is the amino acid analyte. For example, D- and L-tryptophan were separated in FAIMS as [NiII(L-Asn)2(D-Trp)-H]+ and [NiII(L-Asn)2(L-Trp)-H]+. As FAIMS separation typically takes place over a time scale of only a few hundred milliseconds, the presented separation method opens new possibilities for rapid analysis of one analyte enantiomer in the presence of the other enantiomer. Preliminary quantification results are presented, which suggest that fast and sensitive quantitative chiral analyses can be performed with FAIMS. Method limitations are discussed in terms of diverse phenomena, which are not yet understood.

Related Papers

• → Ion mobility–mass spectrometry(2008)1,150 cited
• → Adding a new separation dimension to MS and LC–MS: What is the utility of ion mobility spectrometry?(2017)180 cited
• → Enhancement of mass spectrometry performance for proteomic analyses using high‐field asymmetric waveform ion mobility spectrometry (FAIMS)(2015)42 cited
• → Ambient surface mass spectrometry–ion mobility spectrometry of intact proteins(2018)16 cited
• An evaluation of miniaturised field asymmetric waveform ion mobility spectrometry hyphenated with time-of-flight mass spectrometry(2014)