• Mass Spectrometry Letters
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.146-151
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• 2021

In this study, the hydrogen/deuterium (HDX) exchange mechanism of active hydrogen, nitrogen, and sulfur-containing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) dissolved in toluene and deuterated methanol by atmospheric pressure photoionization (APPI) is investigated. The comparison of the data obtained using APPI suggests that aniline and benzene-1,2-dithiol contain two exchanging hydrogens. The APPI HDX that best explains the experimental findings was investigated with the use of quantum mechanical calculations. The HDX mechanism is composed of a two-step reaction: in the first step, analyte radical ion gets deuterated, and in the second step, the hydrogen transfer occurs from deuterated analyte to de-deuterated methanol to complete the exchange reaction. The suggested mechanism provides fundamentals for the HDX technique that is important for structural identification with mass spectrometry. This paper is dedicated to Professor Seung Koo Shin for his outstanding contributions in chemistry and mass spectrometry.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.749-752
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• 2014

New software was developed for the assignment of elemental formulae based on high-resolution mass spectra and subsequent hydrogen/deuterium exchange data. Entire peaks in high-resolution mass spectra were grouped by their Kendrick mass defect values, and the weighted RMS deviations between theoretical and experimental values were used to determine elemental formulae. After this initial assignment, formulae containing deuterium atoms were sorted in order to interpret hydrogen/deuterium exchange spectra. The software was successfully applied to hydrogen/deuterium exchange spectra of resins and aromatic fractions from heavy crude oil.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.1401-1406
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• 2013

This study tested the feasibility of observing H/D exchange of intact protein by top-down electron capture dissociation (ECD) mass spectrometry for the investigation of protein structure. Ubiquitin is selected as a model system. Local structural information was obtained from the deuteration levels of c and $z^{\cdot}$ ions generated from ECD. Our results showed that ${\alpha}$-helix region has the lowest deuteration level and the C-terminal fraction containing a highly mobile tail has the highest deuteration level, which correlates well with previous X-Ray and HDX/NMR analyses. We studied site-specific H/D exchange kinetics by monitoring H/D exchange rate of several structural motives of ubiquitin. Two hydrogen bonded ${\beta}$-strands showed similar HDX rates. However, the outer ${\beta}$-strand always has higher deuteration level than the inner ${\beta}$-strand. The HDX rate of the turn structure (residues 8-11) is lower than that of ${\beta}$-strands (residues 1-7 and residues 12-17) it connects. Although isotopic distribution gets broader after H/D exchange which results in a limited number of backbone cleavage sites detected, our results demonstrate that this method can provide valuable detailed structural information of proteins. This approach should also be suitable for the structural investigation of other unknown proteins, protein conformational changes, as well as protein-protein interactions and dynamics.

• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.527-535
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• 2021

Sclerostin (SOST), a regulator of bone formation in osteocytes, inhibits the canonical Wnt signaling by interacting with low-density lipoprotein receptor-related protein 5/6 (LRP5/6) to prevent Wnt binding. Loss-of-function mutations of the SOST gene caused massive bone outgrowth and SOST-null mouse exhibited a high bone density phenotype. Therefore, SOST has been suggested as a promising therapeutic target for osteoporosis. A few previous studies with X-ray crystallography identified the binding interfaces between LRP6 and SOST, but there are limitations in these studies as they used truncated SOST protein or SOST peptide. Here, we analyzed the conformational dynamics of SOST-LRP6 E1E2 complex using hydrogen/deuterium exchange mass spectrometry (HDX-MS). We examined the effect of the C-terminal tail of SOST on LRP6 conformation upon complex formation. HDX-MS analysis suggested a new potential binding interface for the C-terminal region of SOST that was missing from the previous crystal structure of the SOST-LRP6 E1E2 complex.