MALDI-TDS efficiently reads out N- and C-terminal sequences even from large proteins (> 40 kDa) using the in-source decay fragmentation (ISD) in the MALDI source. MALDI ISD produces singly charged species making sequence read-out extremely easy. These can be used to identify an unknown protein, to assign detailed structures of fusion proteins or mutation sites. Even complex, PEGylated therapeutic proteins and antibodies (intact and subunit) can be analyzed using MALDI-TDS. Adding value to and complementary to traditional Edman sequencing capabilities, MALDI-TDS works as well on N-terminally blocked proteins and provides information about the C-terminal too. Furthermore, the whole method takes only a few minutes from sample preparation, spectrum acquisition, spectral processing using dedicated fast and reliable TDS software, to the result in the form of an annotated ISD spectrum. A PDF report can be automatically generated to provide a documented result of the analysis.
In summary, the benefits of MALDI TDS include:
- Generate sequence information, even from large undigested proteins
- Fast N + C termini characterization
- Offers added-value over Edman Sequencing