Energetic switch of the proline effect in collision-induced dissociation of singly and doubly protonated peptide Ala-Ala-Arg-Pro-Ala-Ala.

Suppression of the selective cleavage at N-terminal of proline is observed in the peptide cleavage by proteolytic enzyme trypsin and in the fragment ion mass spectra of peptides containing Arg-Pro sequence. An insight into the fragmentation mechanism of the influence of arginine residue on the proline effect can help in prediction of mass spectra and in protein structure analysis. In this work, collision-induced dissociation spectra of singly and doubly charged peptide AARPAA were studied by ESI MS/MS and theoretical calculation methods. The proline effect was evaluated by comparing the experimental ratio of fragments originated from cleavage of different amide bonds. The results revealed that the backbone amide bond cleavage was selected by the energy barrier height of the fragmentation pathway although the strong proton affinity of the Arg side chain affected the stereostructure of the peptide and the dissociation mechanism. The thermodynamic stability of the fragment ions played a secondary role in the abundance ratio of fragments generated via different pathways. Fragmentation studies of protonated peptide AACitPAA supported the energy-dependent hypothesis. The results provide an explanation to the long-term arguments between the steric conflict and the proton mobility mechanisms of proline effect.