The Tribrid Quadrupole-Ion Trap-Orbitrap Mass Spectrometer: the Ultimate Proteomics Platform

Yishai Levin, The Nancy and Stephen Grand Israel National Center for Personalized Medicine, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel (yishai.levin@weizmann.ac.il)
Alexandra Gabashvili, The Nancy And Stephen Grand Israel National Center For Personalized Medicine, Weizmann Institute Of Science, Rehovot, Israel
Dalia Elinger, The Nancy And Stephen Grand Israel National Center For Personalized Medicine, Weizmann Institute Of Science, Rehovot, Israel
David Morgenstern, The Nancy And Stephen Grand Israel National Center For Personalized Medicine, Weizmann Institute Of Science, Rehovot, Israel

Recently, a new type of mass spectrometer was introduced, housing several technologies in one instrument, called the tribrid Orbitrap Fusion Lumos. It houses a quadrupole, dual pressure ion trap and an Orbitrap mass analyzers providing the ability to measure intact molecules and performing fragmentation simultaneously. It can also perfrom on the fly calculations to determine the optimal fragmentation technique of the three available: resonance based collisional dissociation, beam collisional dissociation or electron transfer dissociation. We benchmarked this instrument for analysis of complex tryptic peptides, analysis of intact proteins and glycopeptide profiling. Our results show an increase of 50% in the number of identified peptides, compared to the standard instruments used in proteomics. For intact proteins, we can achieve isotopic resolutions for proteins as large as 50 kDa. We can identify and quantify over 200 glycosylation forms and sites (O-linked and N-linked) from human serum.

This exemplifies the power of this platform as the state of the art platform for analysis of proteins and peptides.