The mass spectrometry platform, accredited by Genopole and operated by the Laboratory for Analysis and Modeling in Biology and the Environment (LAMBE) (University of Évry/CNRS/Cergy Paris University) shas acquired a Select Series Cyclic IMS system, an instrument with an unmatched ability to separate, characterize and quantify molecular species in complex samples. It attains that level of performance through a combination of high resolution capacities and cyclic ion mobility technology.
Financed by Genopole and theUniversity of Évry Paris-Saclay, the system was installed in June 2023 at LAMBE, the personnel of which contribute expertise in analytical chemistry, structural analysis and biophysics to its deployment. This mass spectrometry system, one of only three available in France, is mutualized by Genopole to respond to the biotech research and innovation needs of the site’s labs and businesses.
Indeed, the growth of post-genomics and its application in health, biomaterials, energy, nonfood crops and the environment is creating a growing need for high-sensitivity, high-resolution molecular characterization among not only academic laboratories but also industrial entities.
The SELECT SERIES Cyclic IMS (see image) responds to these challenges in research and innovation. It brings a disruptive technology, cyclic ion mobility (cIM) separation, to the detection and structural characterization of molecules in mixed samples via mass spectrometry (MS). This particularly versatile, state of the art instrument will meet the R&D demands of the academic laboratories and biotech businesses at the Évry biocluster and Paris-Saclay University. It is already serving the needs of five biocluster labs (SABNP, LBEPS, Genomics Metabolics, GenHotel and LAMBE:
(SABNP, LBEPS, Genomics Metabolics, GenHotel, LAMBE).
A remarkably complete range of technologies at the platform
LAMBE has a wide range of ion sources and fragmentation modalities to serve the new MS system. Such sources as ESI, nanoESI, ASAP, APCI, and DESI enable analyses of liquids and solids. Particularly, DESI enables analyses via molecular imaging. Different fragmentation modalities, that is, methods used to break chemical bonds (by CID, ECD or SID), can also diversify the obtained structural information. This is the case for certain proteins, peptides and oligo/polysaccharides that contain labile groups, and for large supramolecular assemblies.
“In terms of performance, thanks to its time of flight (ToF) analyzer equipped with two electrostatic mirrors, this new instrument can attain very high resolution values, for example greater than 100,000 (M/ΔM) for the [M+6H]6+ ion of bovine insulin” explains Régis Daniel, director of LAMBE in charge of the mass spectrometry platform. “The high-resolution capacity enables the separation of a greater number of molecular species and eases structural determination” he continues. “The system provides compound mass measurement to a precision of <0.5 ppm, which permits the determination of the empirical formulae of small molecules with greater confidence“.
The cIM system’s separation dimension can also be supplemented with upstream coupling to either analytical/micro-flow (ACQUITY Premier) or nanoflow (ACQUITY UPLC M-Class) liquid chromatography.
Mass spectrometry teamed with cyclic ion mobility: a disruptive technology
Recent technological developments have led to the marketing of novel instruments with ever-increasing resolution power. in 2019, as a part of those advances, the company Waters introduced the SELECT SERIES Cyclic IMS, a quadrupole Tof (QToF) mass spectrometer teamed with a high-resolution ion mobility technology.
This disruptive technology involves a circular, gas-filled ion mobility cell that drives ions to do multiple revolutions within it. This allows for the measurement of the mobility of the ions in the gas and in turn their separation according to their three-dimensional structures.
The number of revolutions possible in the mobility cell is theoretically unlimited and thus the ions’ trajectories too. This results in unequaled separation performance (ultra-high mobility resolution up to about 750, compared to a maximum of 250 in older systems).
That ion mobility separation is coupled to the mass spectrometer within the same SELECT SERIES Cyclic IMS instrument, which constitutes a very powerful pair for discriminating different compounds sharing a same mass, or differently organized compounds sharing a same composition. Combining the above with upstream chromatographic separation gives one of the most powerful analytical systems the world has to offer.
