Peptide sequencing: the utility of chemical ionization mass spectrometry

Chemical ionization mass spectrometry is used at low resolution to determine the sequences of permethylated acetyl peptides. The method has been tested with 45 peptides, between 2 and 5 residues long, including examples of all of the common amino acids except cysteine and N-terminal asparagine. The isobutane chemical ionization spectra contain three principal types of N-terminal sequence ion and one type of C-terminal sequence ion. The redundant information available from these four types of sequence ion increase the reliability of the sequence determination. In prospect, isobutane chemical ionization mass spectrometry seems to be a useful technique for peptide sequence determination, and may have advantages in some cases.