Technology
Mass spectrometry plays a vital role in every step of protein and pharmaceutical research, from discovery proteomics to clinical biomarkers.
In tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS), the analyte of interest is fragmented and the mass-to-charge (m/z) ratios of the fragments are measured. To improve the signal-to-noise ratio this measurement is repeated multiple times, and the resulting data are read out as a 1D graph: m/z on the x-axis and average abundance across the repeat scans on the y-axis. However, the typical approach of averaging the scans results in a loss of useful information. As a result, a number of key challenges in protein MS remain difficult to overcome, including the analysis of MS/MS spectra of complex mixtures, large intact proteins and post-translational modification patterns.
Dispectral’s technology enables the extraction of richer information and more powerful scientific discovery. We identify correlations between the small fluctuations across repeated scans to build a 2D map that reveals whether fragments are born in the same fragmentation process.