The Rise of Trapped Ion Mobility Spectrometry: Principles, Applications, and Recent Developments

Area of Science:

• Analytical Chemistry
• Biochemistry
• Structural Biology

Background:

• Trapped ion mobility spectrometry (TIMS) is a versatile alternative to drift tube ion mobility spectrometry.
• TIMS analyzes ions using an electric field, trapping them against a moving gas flow.
• Its small size and low operating voltage facilitate hybridization with mass spectrometry.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review different designs and operational modes of TIMS.
• To highlight the advantages, potentials, and challenges of TIMS in omics sciences.
• To introduce new TIMS platforms and discuss future applications.

Main Methods:

• Ions are accumulated and trapped in an electric field.
• Elution occurs based on collision cross section (CCS) as the electric field strength is scanned.
• TIMS is coupled with Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry (TOFMS) for analysis.

Main Results:

• TIMS-MS coupling enhances peak capacity, reducing mass spectra complexity.
• This leads to a greater depth of peptide identification in bottom-up proteomics.
• TIMS has found broad applications in proteomics, glycomics, metabolomics, lipidomics, and native mass spectrometry.

Conclusions:

• TIMS technology offers significant advantages for various omics sciences, including metabolomics and structural biology.
• Its integration with mass spectrometry, particularly the timsTOF instrument, has established it as a key analytical tool.
• Future directions include advanced platforms for single-cell analysis and broader structural biology applications.