Collision-induced dissociation of peptide thioesters:: the influence of peptide length on fragmentation

Five peptide thioesters of increasing length were fragmented using two processes, in-source and in-collision cell fragmentation, using an electrospray source coupled to a triple quadrupole mass spectrometer. Comparison of their fragmentations was made in regard to their length. The two fragmentation conditions show that the peptide length has no influence on structural information and that the fragmentation efficiency is higher for the smallest peptides than for the longest. The particularity of these peptide thioesters consists of the neutral loss of ethanethiol. The absence of the a(3) fragment ion and the presence of the (a(3)-17) ion on the collision-induced dissociation mass spectra are noted.