Ion Mobility Separation of Peptide Isotopomers

Differential or field asymmetric waveform ion mobility spectrometry (FAIMS) operating at high electric fields fully resolves isotopic isomers for a peptide with labeled residues. The naturally present isotopes, alone and together with targeted labels, also cause spectral shifts that approximately add for multiple heavy atoms. Separation qualitatively depends on the gas composition. These findings may enable novel strategies in proteomic and metabolomic analyses using stable isotope labeling.