The main purpose of this proposal is to develop a novel ion source for biological mass spectrometry (MS). It will increase the ionization efficiency of biomolecules in the matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) technique. Combined with a time-of-flight (TOF) mass analyzer this ion source will allow high-throughput analysis of protein mixtures. Another specific goal of this proposal is to recover suppressed peptide and protein ions in complex mixtures. This will make mass spectrometric identification of proteins and their posttranslational modifications more sensitive and reliable.
