Richard O’Hair and colleagues use mass spectrometry (MS) as an analytical tool to study the mechanism of protein oxidation.
They say in the paper that the aims of their work are:
- To establish whether these peptide radicals react with oxygen in the gas phase to form peroxyl radicals and if so to examine the gas-phase chemistry of these peroxyl radicals
- To determine if the radicals NO. and NO2. can act as ‘radical scavengers’ of these peptide radicals and if so to establish whether the resultant adducts provide structural information on any migrations of the original peptide radical sites
If you want to find out whether they achieved these goals, download this HOT article which is free to access until 5th May.
This paper is part of the OBC collection of free radical chemistry papers in memory of Athel Beckwith that will be published soon. Watch this space!
Gas-phase ion-molecule reactions using regioselectively generated radical cations to model oxidative damage and probe radical sites in peptides
Christopher K. Barlow, Adam Wright, Christopher J. Easton and Richard A. J. O’Hair
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2011, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C0OB01245A
