"Polymeromis": Mass Spectrometry (MS) based Strategies in Polymer Science towards complete Sequencing Approaches

Altuntas, Esra; Schubert, Ulrich S.

Abstract:

Mass spectrometry (MS) is the most versatile and comprehensive method in “OMICS” sciences ( i.e. in proteomics, genomics, metabolomics and lipidomics). The applications of MS and tandem MS (MS/MS or MS n ) provide sequence information of the full complement of biological samples in order to under- stand the importance of the sequences on their precise and specific functions. Nowadays, the control of polymer sequences and their accurate characterization is one of the significant challenges of current polymer science. Therefore, a similar approach can be very beneficial for characterizing and understand- ing the complex structures of synthetic macromolecules. MS-based strategies allow a relatively precise examination of polymeric structures ( e.g. their molar mass distributions, monomer units, side chain sub- stituents, end-group functionalities, and copolymer compositions). Moreover, tandem MS offer accurate structural information from intricate macromolecular structures; however, it produces vast amount of data to interpret. In “OMICS” sciences, the software application to interpret the obtained data has devel- oped satisfyingly ( e.g. in proteomics), because it is not possible to handle the amount of data acquired via (tandem) MS studies on the biological samples manually. It can be expected that special software tools will improve the interpretation of (tandem) MS output from the investigations of synthetic polymers as well. Eventually, the MS/MS field will also open up for polymer scientists who are not MS-specialists. In this review, we dissect the overall framework of the MS and MS/MS analysis of synthetic polymers into

Year:

2014

Type of Publication:

Article

Journal:

Analytica Chimica Acta

Volume:

808

Pages:

56 - 69