O MALDI
The o-MALDI (orthogonal) Matrix assisted laser desorption
ionization instrument is actually a hybrid of components found
on two of or more traditional instruments. The o-MALDI is
actually and ion source/interface that bolts on the front
of our Q-STAR tandem mass spectrometer.
Reading the MALDI-ToF article in the "science"
section will explain the basic principles involved with generating
ions from a MALDI source. The MALDI ToF instrument is not
usually used to generate sequence rich information form the
analysis of peptides but is a very rapid and high-throughput
technique that is widely used for many types of analyses.
The tandem mass spectrometer or Q-STAR (quadrupole / time
of flight mass analyzers) is used to generate sequence rich
spectra but is not as straight forward to operate as the MALDI
ToF instrument and can not analyze samples in the same high
throughput manner as the MALDI.
The o-MALDI source was developed taking these facts into
account and what resulted is a high-throughput, easy to use
interface that can be applied to an instrument capable of
producing sequence information. Why is this important? Well
researchers that work with uncharacterized genomes find that
mass mapping with MALDI ToF data does not always produce confident
identifications, now after a rapid, inexpensive analysis is
made on the MALDI-ToF instrument the target plate can actually
be transferred to the tandem instrument fitted with the o-MALDI
interface and used to generate sequence data from samples
that did not produce useful information from the MALDI-ToF.
Of course this is only one example of its application and
the o-MALDI source will definitely see new and unique applications
in the very near future.
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