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DNA and locked nucleic acid (LNA) were characterized as single strands, as well as double stranded DNA-DNA duplexes and DNA-LNA hybrids using tandem mass spectrometry with collision-induced dissociation. Additionally, ion mobility spectrometry was carried out on selected species. Oligonucleotide duplexes of different sequences – bearing mismatch positions and abasic sites of complementary DNA 15-mers – were investigated to unravel general trends in their stability in the gas phase. Single stranded LNA oligonucleotides were also investigated with respect to their gas phase behavior and fragmentation upon collision-induced dissociation. In contrast to the collision-induced dissociation of DNA, almost no base loss was observed for LNAs. Here, backbone cleavages were the dominant dissociation pathways. This finding was further underlined by the need for higher activation energies. Base losses from the LNA strand were also absent in fragmentation experiments of the investigated DNA-LNA hybrid duplexes. While DNA-DNA duplexes dissociated easily into single stranded fragments, the high stability of DNA-LNA hybrids resulted in predominant fragmentation of the DNA part rather than the LNA, while base losses were only observed from the DNA single strand of the hybrid.
The composition of acoustically levitated droplets was probed by a novel combination of mid-IR laser evaporation and subsequent postionization via secondary electrospray ionization. The combination of microliter samples and subnanoliter sampling provided time-resolved interrogation of droplets and allowed for a kinetic investigation of the laser-induced release of the analyte, which was found to strongly depend on the analytes. The observed substancespecific delayed release of the analytes permitted baseline-separated discrimination of the analytes, ideal for the study of complex samples.
The additionally applied postionization scheme was found to enable efficient detection of small volatile compounds as well as peptides. The detection of small molecules and peptides occurred under very different sampling geometries, pointing to two distinct underlying ionization mechanisms. Overall, our results suggest that the experimental setup presented in this study can serve as a widely applicable platform to study chemical reactions in acoustically levitated droplets as model reactors.
The combination of acoustically levitated droplets, mid-IR laser evaporation, and subsequent post-ionization by secondary electrospray ionization was applied for monitoring the enzymatic digestion of various proteins. Acoustically levitated droplets are an ideal, wall-free model reactor, readily allowing compartmentalized microfluidic trypsin digestions. Time-resolved interrogation of the droplets yielded real-time information on the progress of the reaction and thus provided insights into reaction kinetics. After 30 min of digestion in the acoustic levitator, the obtained protein sequence coverages were identical to the reference overnight digestions. Importantly, our results clearly demonstrate that the applied experimental setup can be used for the real-time investigation of chemical reactions. Furthermore, the described methodology only uses a fraction of the typically applied amounts of solvent, analyte, and trypsin. Thus, the results exemplify the use of acoustic levitation as a green analytical chemistry alternative to the currently used batch reactions.