Integrated Platform for Mass-Spectrometric Studies of Protein Structure

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Summary Technology for studying the higher order structure (HOS) and interactions of biomolecules is a highlighted NIGMS SBIR/STTR research topic. Mass-spectrometric methods for studying HOS include hydroxyl radical footprinting as well as chemical methods to covalently label amino acid side-chain functional groups, and also hydrogen/deuterium exchange (HDX) on protein backbone amides. These methods require only small amounts of not-necessarily-pure material, and can study conformation and dynamics of proteins in solution with or without ligands. Mass spectrometric methods are especially well suited to biopharma comparability and epitope mapping studies. Currently, there is no software that can analyze mass spectrometric data from both covalent labeling and HDX experiments, even though the two methods both probe solvent accessibility and, if combined, would give finer resolution and greater confidence. The outcome will be vendor-neutral commercial software with advanced analytical and reporting capabilities that can handle both HDX and covalent labeling experiments.