Simultaneous collision induced dissociation of the charge reduced parent ion during electron capture dissociation.

A method of performing collision induced dissociation (CID) on the charge-reduced parent ion as it is formed during electron capture dissociation (ECD), called ECD+CID, is described. In ECD+CID, the charge-reduced parent ion is selectively activated using resonant excitation and collisions with the helium bath gas inside a linear quadrupole ion trap ECD device (ECD(LIT)). It has been observed that ECD+CID can improve the sequence coverage for beta-endorphin over performing ECD alone (i.e., from 72 to 97%). Perhaps just as important, ECD+CID can be used to reduce the extent of multiple electron capture events observed when performing ECD in the ECD(LIT). Consequently, the abundance of mass-to-charge ratios corresponding to ECD product ions that contain neutralized protons is decreased, simplifying the interpretation of the product ion spectrum.