Mass spectrometric methods to analyze the structural organization of macromolecular complexes

With the development of soft ionization techniques such as electrospray ionization (ESI), mass spectrometry (MS) has found widespread application in structural biology. The ability to transfer large biomolecular complexes intact into the gas-phase, combined with the low sample consumption and high sensitivity of MS, has made ESI-MS a method of choice for the characterization of macromolecules. This paper describes the application of MS to study large non-covalent complexes. We categorize the available techniques in two groups. First, solution-based techniques in which the biomolecules are labeled in solution and subsequently characterized by MS. Three MS-based techniques are discussed, namely hydroxyl radical footprinting, cross-linking and hydrogen/deuterium exchange (HDX) MS. In the second group, MS-based techniques to probe intact biomolecules in the gas-phase, e.g. side-chain microsolvation, HDX and ion mobility spectrometry are discussed. Together, the approaches place MS as a powerful methodology for an ever growing plethora of structural applications.