Effects of acidic peptide size and sequence on trivalent praseodymium adduction and electron transfer dissociation mass spectrometry

Using the lanthanide ion praseodymium, Pr(III), metallated ion formation and electron transfer dissociation (ETD) were studied for 25 biological and model acidic peptides. For chain lengths of seven or more residues, even highly acidic peptides that can be difficult to protonate by electrospray ionization will metallate and undergo abundant ETD fragmentation. Peptides composed of predominantly acidic residues form only the deprotonated ion, M + Pr ‐ H]²⁺; this ion yields near complete ETD sequence coverage for larger peptides. Peptides with a mixture of acidic and neutral residues generate M + Pr]³⁺, which cleaves between every residue for many peptides. Acidic peptides that contain at least one residue with a basic side chain also produce the protonated ion, M + Pr + H]⁴⁺; this ion undergoes the most extensive sequence coverage by ETD. Primarily metallated and non‐metallated c‐ and z‐ions form for all peptides investigated. Metal adducted product ions are only present when at least half of the peptide sequence can be incorporated into the ion; this suggests that the metal ion simultaneously attaches to more than one acidic site. The only site consistently lacking dissociation is at the N‐terminal side of a proline residue. Increasing peptide chain length generates more backbone cleavage for metal‐peptide complexes with the same charge state. For acidic peptides with the same length, increasing the precursor ion charge state from 2+ to 3+ also leads to more cleavage. The results of this study indicate that highly acidic peptides can be sequenced by ETD of complexes formed with Pr(III). Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.