Recent advances in biological separations using trapped ion mobility spectrometry - mass spectrometry

Ion Mobility Spectrometry (IMS) is a widely used technique for the post-ionization separation and structural characterization of biomolecules. Trapped IMS (TIMS) is a relatively recent advance in the field of linear IMS that has shown advantages for the study of biological problems when in tandem with mass spectrometry (TIMS-MS). TIMS's unique nature of holding ions using an electric field against a moving buffer gas allows for the tuning of the mobility separation by defining the scan rate as a function of the analytical challenge. TIMS can provide accurate CCS values (<0.2% RSD) and a high mobility resolving power (R up to 470). This recently commercialized technology has distinct analytical and structural biology applications. The present review focuses on advances in biological separations using TIMS-MS instrumentation for the case of isomer separations (e.g., lipids, epimers, topoisomers, positional PTMs), conformational states (e.g., peptides and proteins) and native macromolecular assemblies. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.