The effect of the source pressure on the abundance of ions of noncovalent protein assemblies in an electrospray ionization orthogonal time-of-flight instrument.

The effect of elevating the pressure in the interface region of an electrospray ionization orthogonal time-of-flight mass spectrometer on the ion intensity of different noncovalent protein assemblies has been investigated. Elevating the pressure in the interface region generally led to an enhanced detection of high m/z ions. The optimum pressure was found to be dependent on the m/z value of the ions. This pressure effect should be carefully addressed when relating ion abundance in the mass spectra to solution phase abundance of noncovalent protein assemblies. Copyright 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.