Selective deletion of the internal lysine residue from the peptide sequence by collisional activation

The gas-phase peptide ion fragmentation chemistry is always the center of attraction in proteomics to analyze the amino acid sequence of peptides and proteins. In this work, we describe the formation of an anomalous fragment ion, which corresponds to the selective deletion of the internal lysine residue from a series of lysine containing peptides upon collisional activation in the ion trap. We detected several water-loss fragment ions and the maximum number of water molecules lost from a particular fragment ion was equal to the number of lysine residues in that fragment. As a consequence of this water-loss phenomenon, internal lysine residues were found to be deleted from the peptide ion. The N,N-dimethylation of all the amine functional groups of the peptide stopped the internal lysine deletion reaction, but selective N-terminal α-amino acetylation had no effect on this process indicating involvement of the side chains of the lysine residues. The detailed mechanism of the lysine deletion was investigated by multistage CID of the modified and unmodified peptides, by isotope labeling and by energy resolved CID studies. The results suggest that the lysine deletion might occur through a unimolecular multistep mechanism involving a seven-membered cyclic imine intermediate formed by the loss of water from a lysine residue in the protonated peptide. This intermediate subsequently undergoes degradation reaction to deplete the interior imine ring from the peptide backbone leading to the deletion of an internal lysine residue.