Advances in Ion Mobility Spectrometry-Mass Spectrometry (IMS-MS)-Based Techniques for Elucidating Higher-Order Protein Structures

Despite its great success in the field of proteomics, mass spectrometry has limited use for determining structural details of peptides, proteins, and their assemblies. Emerging ion mobility spectrometry-mass spectrometry has enabled us to explore the conformational space of protein ions in the gas phase, and further combinations with the gas-phase ion spectroscopy and the collision-induced unfolding have extended its abilities to elucidating the secondary structure and local details of conformational transitions. This review will provide a brief introduction to the combined approaches of IMS-MS with gas-phase ion infrared spectroscopy or collision-induced unfolding and their most recent results that successfully revealed higher-order structural details.