Native Triboelectric Nanogenerator Ion Mobility-Mass Spectrometry of Egg Proteins Relevant to Objects of Cultural Heritage at Picoliter and Nanomolar Quantities.

Abstract

Native mass spectrometry (nMS) has found widespread success in measuring native-like protein structures in the gas-phase and, when combined with ion mobility (IM), is capable of measuring protein collision cross sections (CCS) and stabilities. These methods are well validated, but often rely on samples that are abundantly available through repeated recombinant protein expression. For ultra-precious and irreplaceable samples from cultural heritage objects, protein content can be far below the micromolar and microliter levels required for robust protein experiments, a major hurdle in characterizing protein higher order structure and degradation mechanisms. Combining triboelectric nanogenerators (TENG) and IM-MS enables measuring protein size and stability rapidly from ultra-small sample quantities. Here, TENG IM-MS is implemented with standard and sub-micron emitters to characterize proteins relevant to cultural heritage objects, and demonstrates native structures can be obtained even at nanomolar concentrations and picoliter quantities.