Doctoral Final – Fatima Obe

About the event

Speaker: Fatima Olayemi Obe, Washington State University

Group: Dr. Brian H. Clowers

Title: STRATEGIES TO ENHANCE SENSITIVITY AND ENABLE TANDEM MASS ANALYSIS OF BIOMOLECULES USING DIGITAL WAVE TECHNOLOGY

Digital wave technology (DWT) is an emerging and promising technique in mass spectrometry (MS) instrumentation, which has been alluded to as “the future of mass spectrometry.”[1] The DWT discriminates charged ions using a rectangular wave for mass filtering instead of the traditional sine wave, offering significant advantages such as a limitless mass range, reduced voltage requirements, and enhanced operational flexibility.[2,3] This work focuses on improving mass resolution in quadrupole instruments by leveraging digital waveform duty cycle variations, thereby enabling their transition from low to medium-high resolution. To achieve this, a digital tandem quadrupole mass filter (DTMF) was developed, utilizing two quadrupole mass filters in series to refine ion stability windows and enhance resolution.[4] The study explores DTMF instrumentation, its application in peptide and protein analysis [5], and the development of a digital pre-filter (DPF) to improve ion transmission efficiency. Overall, this research advances quadrupole MS capabilities by optimizing DWT for biomolecule analysis, enhancing mass resolution, and improving ion sensitivity for better analytical performance.

1. Reilly, P. T. A.; Chakravorty, S.; Bailey, C. F.; Obe, F. O.; Huntley, A. P. Will the Digital Mass Filter Be the Next High-Resolution High-Mass Analyzer? J. Am. Soc. Mass Spectrom. 2021 32, 2615-2620.

2. Berton, A.; Traldi, P.; Ding, L. Brancia, F. L. Mapping the Stability Diagram of a Digital Ion Trap (DIT) Mass Spectrometer Varying the Duty Cycle of the Trapping Rectangular Waveform. J. Am. Soc. Mass Spectrom. 2008, 19, 620–625.

3. Hoffman, N. M.; Gotlib, Z. P.; Opačić, B.; Huntley, A. P.; Moon, A. M.; Donahoe, K. E. G. Brabeck, G. F.; Reilly, P. T. A. Digital Waveform Technology and the Next Generation of Mass Spectrometers. J. Am. Soc. Mass Spectrom. 2018. 29, 331- 341.

4. Huntley, A. P.; Reilly, P. T. A. Computational evaluation of a new digital tandem quadrupole mass filter. J. Mass Spectrom, 2021, 56, 1-10.

5. Obe; F. O.; Chakravorty, S.; Groetsema, E.; Collings, B. A.; Hager, J. W.; Reilly, P. T. A. Experimental Validation of the Digital Tandem Mass Filter. J. Am. Soc. Mass Spectrom. 2023, 34, 154–160.