Decompositions of odd- and even-electron anions derived from deoxy-polyadenylates

Radical anions have been formed via electron transfer from multiply charged 5'-d(AAA)-3' and 5'-d(AAAA)-3' anions to CCl3+. These ions have been isolated in a quadrupole ion trap operated with helium bath gas at a pressure of 1 mtorr and subjected to resonance excitation (i.e., conventional ion trap collisional activation). Collisional activation of the even-electron species of the same charge state formed directly via electrospray was also performed by using essentially identical conditions. The collisional activation data can be compared directly without ambiguity arising from differences in parent ion internal energies and/or dissociation time frames. Both the odd- and even-electron anions yield extensive sequence-informative fragmentation but show significant differences in the extent of nucleobase loss and in the relative contributions from the various sequence diagnostic dissociation channels. The results of this study indicate that radical anions derived from multiply deprotonated oligo-deoxynucleotides that survive the electron transfer process are stable with respect to fragmentation in the ion trap environment under normal storage conditions and that the unimolecular dissociation behavior of these ions differs from the even-electron anions of the same charge state. These findings suggest, therefore, that odd- and even-electron anions might be used to provide complementary sequence information in cases in which neither ion type provides the full sequence. (C) 1997 American Society for Mass Spectrometry