Thermo Finnigan LLC

Thomas D McClure

David A Wright

Michael J Athanas

Matthew Kump

A system comprises an electrostatic trapping mass analyzer and an information processor configured to receive a transient signal from the electrostatic trapping mass analyzer at a maximum resolution, the information processor comprising instructions operable to: partition the transient signal into segments and, while a quality metric is either less than a pre-determined minimum threshold or greater than a pre-determined maximum threshold value, to perform the steps of: (i) defining a test transient as being equal to either a first one of the segments or a previously defined transient with an appended signal segment; (ii) generating a spectrum of component frequencies by calculating a mathematical transform of the test transient; and (iii) determining the quality metric from the spectrum of component frequencies; and set an instrumental resolution to be employed for subsequent mass spectral data acquisitions in accordance with a length of the most-recently-defined test transient.

Methods for operating electrostatic trap mass analyzers

A method of operating an electrostatic trapping mass analyzer, comprises: (a) operating the electrostatic trapping mass analyzer at a maximum resolution so as to acquire a transient signal; (b) partitioning the transient signal into signal segments; (c) while a quality metric is either less than a pre-determined minimum threshold or greater than a pre-determined maximum threshold value, performing the steps of: (i) defining a test transient as being equal to either a first one of the segments or a previously defined transient with an appended signal segment; (ii) calculating a mathematical transform of the test transient and thereby generating a spectrum of component frequencies; and (iii) determining the quality metric from the spectrum of component frequencies; and (d) setting an instrumental resolution to be employed for subsequent mass spectral data acquisitions in accordance with a length of the most-recently-defined test transient.

A mass spectrometric analysis method comprises: (1) processing a mass spectrum to reduce the signals to monoisotopic values; (2) creating a list of differences between the monoisotopic values; (3) creating one or more lists of theoretical mass-to-charge differences among known adducts, charge states and polymerization states whose formation may be expected from various analyte molecules; (4) comparing the theoretical differences (line or edge in the network) to the list of differences from the mass spectrum and, where applicable, make and tabulate tentative species assignments; (5) assigning the mass spectral peaks to respective ion species in accordance with the redundancy of each assignment based on multiple independent calculated mass-to-charge differences pertaining to each peak; (6) choosing an ion species for further fragmentation or reaction in the mass spectrometer, based on the assigning; and (7) performing the fragmentation or reaction on the chosen ion species in the mass spectrometer.

Use of mass spectral difference networks for determining charge state, adduction, neutral loss and polymerization

A mass spectrometric analysis method comprises: (1) processing a mass spectrum to reduce the signals to monoisotopic values; (2) creating a list of differences between the monoisotopic values; (3) creating one or more lists of theoretical mass-to-charge differences among known adducts, charge states and polymerization states whose formation may be expected from various analyte molecules; (4) comparing the theoretical differences (line or edge in the network) to the list of differences from the mass spectrum and, where applicable, make and tabulate tentative species assignments; and (5) assigning the mass spectral peaks to respective ion species in accordance with the redundancy of each assignment based on multiple independent calculated mass-to-charge differences pertaining to each peak.

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Sunnyvale, CA, United States of America

Thomas D McClure