Investigating the role of adducts in protein supercharging with sulfolane

The supercharging effect of sulfolane on cytochrome c (cyt c) during electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) in the absence of conformational effects was investigated. The addition of sulfolane on the order of 1 mM or greater to denaturing solutions of cyt c results in supercharging independent of protein concentration over the range of 0.1 to 10 μM. While supercharging was observed in the positive mode, no change in the charge state distribution was observed in the negative mode, ruling out polarity-independent factors such as conformational changes or surface tension effects. A series of sulfolane adducts observed with increasing intensity concurrent with increasing charge state suggests that a direct interaction between sulfolane and the charged sites of cyt c plays an important role in supercharging. We propose that charge delocalization occurring through large-scale dipole reordering of the highly polar supercharging reagent reduces the electrostatic barrier for proximal charging along the cyt c amino acid chain. Supporting this claim, supercharging was shown to increase with increasing dipole moment for several supercharging reagents structurally related to sulfolane.