Proton-Transfer Reactions Modulate Protein Ion Structure to Yield Altered Backbone Cleavage Pathways in Top-Down Mass Spectrometry
Proton-transfer reaction (PTR) has emerged as a powerful tool for top-down proteomics. It can mitigate spectral congestion and improve the signal-to-noise ratio of electrospray ionization (ESI)-generated intact proteins. We hypothesized that charge removal during PTR of Coulombically unfolded, denatured ESI ions indu...