| Abstract: | The formation of protonated serine octamer clusters from homochiral and heterochiral monomer solutions was investigated. The well-established preference for homochiral cluster formation was found to originate from collision-induced dissociation of the less stable ion population B prior to reaching the mass spectrometer's analyzer cell. In addition, collision-induced dissociation experiments were undertaken to investigate the relative stabilities of populations A and B and infrared multi-photon dissociation experiments addressed the relative stabilities of the protonated serine octamer cluster and its metaclusters. Isotopically-labeled serine was used throughout the experiments. |
