Application of different fragmentation techniques for the analysis of phosphopeptides using a hybrid linear ion trap-FTICR mass spectrometer.

Electron capture dissociation (ECD) and infrared multiphoton dissociation (IRMPD) present complementary techniques for the fragmentation of peptides and proteins in Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (FTICR-MS) in addition to the commonly used collisionally activated dissociation (CAD). Both IRMPD and ECD have been shown to be applicable for an efficient sequencing of peptides and proteins, whereas ECD has proven especially valuable for mapping labile posttranslational modifications (PTMs), such as phosphorylations. In this work, we compare the different fragmentation techniques and MS detection in a linear ion trap and the ICR cell with respect to their abilities to efficiently identify and characterize phosphorylated peptides. For optimizing fragmentation parameters, sets of synthetic peptides with molecular weights ranging from approximately 1 to 4 kDa and different levels of phosphorylation were analyzed. The influence of spectrum averaging for obtaining high-quality spectra was investigated. Our results show that the fragmentation methods CAD and ECD allow for a facilitated analysis of phosphopeptides; however, their general applicability for analyzing phosphopeptides has to be evaluated in each specific case with respect to the given analytical task. The major advantage of complementary peptide cleavages by combining different fragmentation methods is the increased amount of information that is obtained during MS/MS analysis of modified peptides. On the basis of the obtained results, we are planning to design LC time-scale compatible, data-dependent MS/MS methods using the different fragmentation techniques in order to improve the identification and characterization of phosphopeptides.