Related topics: protein

Chromatin modifier-centered pathway points to higher crop yield

A team led by Prof. Song Xianjun from the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, while researching a ternary protein complex in rice nuclei that affects grain size, has shown that the transcription factor ...

ESA's tiny pinhole thruster is ready for production

Rocket propulsion technology has progressed leaps and bounds since the first weaponized rockets of the Chinese and Mongolian empires. They were nothing more than rocket-powered arrows and spears but they set the foundations ...

AI generates proteins with exceptional binding strengths

A new study in Nature reports an AI-driven advance in biotechnology with implications for drug development, disease detection, and environmental monitoring. Scientists at the Institute for Protein Design at the University ...

Discovery reveals lipid-signaling microdomains in cells

Important signaling molecules called phospholipids are active throughout cells in small compartments called condensates, rather than functioning primarily in cell membranes as previously thought, according to a study from ...

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Mass spectrometry

Mass spectrometry (MS) is an analytical technique for the determination of the elemental composition of a sample or molecule. It is also used for elucidating the chemical structures of molecules, such as peptides and other chemical compounds. The MS principle consists of ionizing chemical compounds to generate charged molecules or molecule fragments and measurement of their mass-to-charge ratios. In a typical MS procedure:

MS instruments consist of three modules: an ion source, which can convert gas phase sample molecules into ions (or, in the case of electrospray ionization, move ions that exist in solution into the gas phase); a mass analyzer, which sorts the ions by their masses by applying electromagnetic fields; and a detector, which measures the value of an indicator quantity and thus provides data for calculating the abundances of each ion present. The technique has both qualitative and quantitative uses. These include identifying unknown compounds, determining the isotopic composition of elements in a molecule, and determining the structure of a compound by observing its fragmentation. Other uses include quantifying the amount of a compound in a sample or studying the fundamentals of gas phase ion chemistry (the chemistry of ions and neutrals in a vacuum). MS is now in very common use in analytical laboratories that study physical, chemical, or biological properties of a great variety of compounds.

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