• Mass Spectrometry Letters
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.93-105
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• 2021

Exosomes have gained the attention of the scientific community because of their role in facilitating intercellular communication, which is critical in disease monitoring and drug delivery research. Exosome research has grown significantly in recent decades, with a focus on the development of various technologies for isolating and characterizing exosomes. Among these efforts is the use of matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization (MALDI) mass spectrometry (MS), which offers high-throughput direct analysis while also being cost and time effective. MALDI is used less frequently in exosome research than electrospray ionization due to the diverse population of extracellular vesicles and the impurity of isolated products, both of which necessitate chromatographic separation prior to MS analysis. However, MALDI-MS is a more appropriate instrument for the analytical approach to patient therapy, given it allows for fast and label-free analysis. There is a huge drive to explore MALDI-MS in exosome research because the technology holds great potential, most notably in biomarker discovery. With methods such as fingerprint analysis, OMICs profiling, and statistical analysis, the search for biomarkers could be much more efficient. In this review, we highlight the potential of MALDI-MS as a tool for investigating exosomes and some of the possible strategies that can be implemented based on prior research.

• Mass Spectrometry Letters
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.65-70
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• 2020

Despite its great success in the field of proteomics, mass spectrometry has limited use for determining structural details of peptides, proteins, and their assemblies. Emerging ion mobility spectrometry-mass spectrometry has enabled us to explore the conformational space of protein ions in the gas phase, and further combinations with the gas-phase ion spectroscopy and the collision-induced unfolding have extended its abilities to elucidating the secondary structure and local details of conformational transitions. This review will provide a brief introduction to the combined approaches of IMS-MS with gas-phase ion infrared spectroscopy or collision-induced unfolding and their most recent results that successfully revealed higher-order structural details.

• BMB Reports
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• v.43 no.7
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• pp.506-511
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• 2010

The levels of salivary cortisol and cortisone in Korean adults were measured for the first time using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). The salivary cortisol and cortisone were separated within 10 min. The regression coefficients (r) of the calibration curves were greater than 0.999 for the two steroids. The limits of quantitation (LOQ) were 0.2 ng/ml for cortisol and 1 ng/ml for cortisone. The intra-day precisions of the assay were <3.9% and 8.6% for cortisol and cortisone respectively, and the inter-day precisions were <1.9% and 4.3% for cortisol and cortisone, respectively. The salivary cortisone concentrations were approximately 4-9 times higher than those of salivary cortisol during the daytime. Diurnal rhythms, during which the cortisol and cortisone concentrations were higher in the morning than in the afternoon, were also observed. The present assay may be useful for the diagnosis of several adrenal dysfunctions in clinical biochemistry.

• Mass Spectrometry Letters
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.29-38
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• 2012

A new approach of volatile compounds analysis is proposed using a linear ion trap Orbitrap mass spectrometer coupled with gas chromatography through an atmospheric pressure photoionization interface. In the proposed GC-HRMS/MS approach, direct chemical composition analysis is made for the precursor ions in high resolution MS spectra and the structural identifications were made through the database search of high quality MS/MS spectra. Successful analysis of a complex perfume sample was demonstrated and compared with GC-EI-Q and GC-EI-TOF. The current approach is complementary to conventional GC-EI-MS analysis and can identify low abundance co-eluting compounds. Toluene co-sprayed as a dopant through API probe significantly enhanced ionization of certain compounds and reduced oxidation during the ionization.

• Mass Spectrometry Letters
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.31-37
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• 2015

Phosphorylation upon protein is well known to a key regulator that implicates in modulating many cellular processes like growth, migration, and differentiation. Up to date, grafting of multidimensional separation techniques onto advanced mass spectrometry (MS) has emerged as a promising tool for figuring out the biological functions of phosphorylation in a cell. However, advanced MS-based phosphoproteomics is still challenging, due to its intrinsic issues, i.e., low stoichiometry, less susceptibility in positive ion mode, and low abundance in biological sample. To overcome these bottlenecks, diverse techniques (e.g., SCX, HILIC, ERLIC, IMAC, TiO₂, etc.) are continuously developed for on-/off-line enrichment of phosphorylated protein (or peptide) from biological samples, thereby helping qualitative/quantitative determination of phosphorylated protein and its phosphorylated sites. In this review, we introduce to the overall views of enrichment tools that are universally used to selectively isolate targeted phosphorylated protein (or peptide) from ordinary ones before MS-based phospoproteomic analysis.

• BMB Reports
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.253-257
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• 1997

Negative ion fast atom bombardment (FAB) mass spectra were found to allow the determination of the linkage positions in a series of underivatized linkage-isomeric oligosaccharides. A previous work (Laine et al., 1988) reported that ion patterns of linkage-isomeric trisaccharides could be distinguished by a positive ion. Negative ion FAB collison-activated dissociation (CAD) mass spectrometry (MS) spectra of trisaccharides exhibited better sensitivity than the positive ion mode and provided specific fragmentation patterns according to the linkage positions. Especially, the fragmentations, m/z 205 in F6 and m/z 221 in G6, not occuring in 1-3 or 1-4 linkage. were an indication of 1-6 linkage, by changing collision energies from + 10 eV to +60 eV. The survival ratios of molecular ions in each collision energy set gave support to previous results in which the order of bond stability was 1-6>1-4>1-3 linkage.

• Mass Spectrometry Letters
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.13-16
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• 2010

The active components in a plant extract can be represented as mass profiles. We introduce here a new, multi-compound discovery method known as Scaling of Correlations between Activity and Mass Profiles (SCAMP). In this method, a correlation coefficient is used to quantify similarities between the extract activity and mass profiles. The method was evaluated by first measuring the anti-oxidation activity of eleven fractions of an Astragali Radix extract using DPPH assays. Next, 15 T Fouriertransform ion cyclotron resonance (FT-ICR) MS was employed to generate mass profiles of the eleven fractions. A comparison of correlation coefficients indicated two compounds at m/z 285.076 and 286.076 that were strong antioxidants. Principal component analyses of these profiles yielded the same result. FT-ICR MS, which offers a mass resolving power of 500,000, was used to discern isotopic fine structures and indicated that the molecular formula corresponding to the peak at m/z 285.076 was $C_{16}H_{13}O_5$. SCAMP in combination with high-resolution MS can be applied to any type of mixture to study pharmacological activity and is a powerful tool for active compound discovery in plant extract studies.

• Journal of Applied Biological Chemistry
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• v.58 no.2
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• pp.175-181
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• 2015

Compositions of essential oils extracted from mint herb such as Mentha piperita, Mentha spicata, and Mentha ${\times}$ piperita var. citrate produced in Jeju were analyzed using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and headspace-GC-MS (HS-GC-MS). By the GC-MS analysis, 13 compounds were tentatively identified in Mentha piperita, Mentha spicata, and Mentha ${\times}$ piperita var. citrate, respectively. Peperitenone oxide, carvone, and linalool were detected as major compounds in Mentha piperita, in Mentha spicata, in Mentha ${\times}$ piperita var. citrate, respectively, based on the ratio of peak intensity in the total ion chromatogram. The greater number of compounds, including volatile alcohols and acetates were identified by HS-GC-MsS than by GC-MS in these all three essential oils. Similar patterns of composition were detected in both Mentha spicata and Mentha ${\times}$ piperita var. citrate by either one of GC-MS methods. However, in case of Mentha piperita, $\small{L}$-(-)-menthol, which was identified as the major compound by HS-GC-MS was detected in dramatically reduced quantity by GC-MS. Interestingly, we found that both linalyl acetate and linalool were identified as the dominant compounds in the essential oil of Mentha ${\times}$ piperita var. citrate.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.384.1-384.1
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• 2016

We reported that amorphous silicon (a-Si) thin film provide sample plate exhibiting a multimodality to measure biomolecules by secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) and laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry (LDI-MS). Kim et al.1 reported that a-Si thin film were suitable to detect small molecules such as drugs and peptides by SIMS and LDI-MS. Recently, bacterial identification has been required in many fields such as food analysis, veterinary science, ecology, agriculture, and so on.2 Mass spectrometry is emerging for identifying and profiling microbiology samples from its advantageous characters of label-free and shot-time analysis. Five species of bacteria - S. aureus, G. glutamicum, B. kurstaki, B. sphaericus, and B. licheniformis - were sampled for MS analysis without lipid extraction in sample preparation steps. The samples were loaded onto the a-Si thin film with a thickness of 100 nm which did not only considered laser-beam penetration but also surface homogeneity. Mass spectra were recorded in both positive and negative ionization modes for more analytical information. High reproducibility and sensitivity of mass spectra were demonstrated in a mass range up to mass-to-charge ratio(m/z) 1200 by applying the a-Si thin film in mentioned above MS. Principle component analysis (PCA) - a popular statistical analysis widely used in data processing was employed to differentiate between five bacterial species. The PCA results verified that each bacterial species were readily distinguished and differentiated effectively from our MS approach. It shows a new opportunity to rapid bacterial profiling and identification in clinical microbiology. More details will be discussed in the presentation.

• Mass Spectrometry Letters
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.109-113
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• 2017

Single analytical procedure including extraction, liquid chromatography, and mass spectrometric analysis was evaluated for the simultaneous measurement of lysophospholipids (LPLs). LPLs, particularly, lysophosphatidic acids (LPA) and sphingosine 1-phosphate (S1P) are lipid messengers ubiquitously found in various biological matrix. The molecular species mediate important physiological roles in association with many diseases (e.g. cancer, inflammation, and neurodegenerative disease), which emphasize the significance of the simple and reliable analytical method for biomarker discovery and molecular mechanistic understanding. Thus, we developed analytical method mainly focusing on, but not limited by those lipid species S1P and LPA using reverse phase liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (RPLC-ESI-MS-MS). Extraction method was modified based on Folch method with optimally minimal level of ionization additive (ammonium formate 10 mM and formic acid). Reverse-phase liquid-chromatography was applied for chromatographical separation in combination with negative ionization mode electrospray-coupled Orbitrap mass spectrometry. The method validation was performed on human blood plasma in a non-targeted lipid profiling manner with full-scan MS mode and data-dependent MS/MS. The proposed method presented good inter-assay precision for primary targets, S1P and LPA. Subsequent analysis of other types of LPLs identified a broad range of lysophosphatidylcholines (LPCs) and lysophosphatidyl-ethanolamines (LPEs).