TY - JOUR A1 - Ickert, Stefanie A1 - Riedel, Jens A1 - Beck, S. A1 - Linscheid, M. W. T1 - Negative nucleotide ions as sensitive probes for energy specificity in collision‐induced fragmentation in mass spectrometry JF - Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry N2 - Rationale: The most commonly used fragmentation methods in tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) are collision‐induced dissociation (CID) and higher energy collisional dissociation (HCD). While in CID the preselected ions in the trap are resonantly (and m/z exclusively) excited, in HCD the entire m/z range experiences the dissociative acceleration. The different excitation is reflected in different fragment distributions. Methods: As a test‐bed for particularly pronounced fragmentation specificity, here MS/MS experiments on several 4‐mer oligonucleotides were conducted employing both collision methods and the results were thoroughly compared. Oligonucleotides are shown to be sensitive probes to subtle changes, especially in the negative ion mode. A detailed analysis of these differences reveals insight into the dissociation mechanics. Results: Thedifferencesarerepresentedinheat‐maps,whichallowforadirectvisualinspection oflargeamountsofdata.Inthesefalsecolourrepresentationsthe,sometimessubtle,changesinthe individual dissociation product distributions become distinct. Another advantage of these graphic plots can be found in the formation of systematic patterns. These patterns reflect trends in dissociation specificity which allow for the formulation of general rules in fragmentation behavior. Conclusions: Instruments equipped with two different excitation schemes for MS/MS are today widely available. Nonetheless, direct comparisons between the individual results are scarcely made. Such comparative studies bear a powerful analytical potential to elucidate fragmentation reaction mechanism. KW - DNA KW - Tandem MS KW - HCD KW - CID PY - 2018 DO - https://doi.org/10.1002/rcm.8062 SN - 0951-4198 SN - 1097-0231 VL - 32 IS - 7 SP - 597 EP - 603 PB - Wiley & Sons, Ltd. AN - OPUS4-44430 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -