Book Review pubs.acs.org/jnp
Review of Mass Spectrometry: Instrumentation, Interpretation, and Applications Part 2 of the book begins with Chapter 5, entitled “Introduction to mass spectra interpretation: Organic chemistry”. Chapter 5 is a rather informative chapter that highlights some practical aspects of acquiring mass spectra, such as scan rate and the relationship to peak shape in a chromatogram. However, the majority of Chapter 5 is dedicated to discussions of fragmentation of organic molecules and practical aspects of interpreting mass spectra such as determining molecular formulas and isotopic purity. This chapter includes a discussion of the nitrogen rule and isotopomer composition. Chapter 6 is devoted to sequencing of peptides and proteins, while Chapter 7 is devoted to optimizing sensitivity and specificity for proteomics. Much of the discussion in Chapter 6 would be relevant to natural product type peptides. Additionally, proteomics experiments could serve natural products research laboratories in other ways, and both chapters would provide useful information to consider. Part 3 has the most diverse set of topics focused on applications. While Part 3 has 10 chapters, each of these 10 chapters is a relatively short vignette highlighting applications to a variety of different research fields including oceanography, space sciences, and imaging mass spectrometry. Having such a diverse array of topics also means that many of these application chapters might not be directly applicable to dayto-day type work done by natural product researchers, but these chapters are informative from the standpoint of the everexpanding use of mass spectrometry. Considering the vast diversity of molecules in nature, many of these chapters will be of interest to some natural products researchers. Overall, this book would be a reasonable textbook for graduate students in natural products chemistry. While the book is not focused on natural products, per se, it does have an immense amount of useful information that would be applicable to natural products. The level of theory is not aimed at a specialist, but would provide sufficient exposure to concepts and terminology for a graduate student to read the literature, including older literature that utilized CI, EI, and FAB. Additionally, the information in this book would provide a baseline in terms of the diversity of instruments available today. The one area that is not covered in this book that would be valuable for a natural product chemist is using FTICR for isotopomer analysis to identify an exact elemental composition. Nonetheless, this book is worth considering for laboratories that would like one book that covers most of the fundamentals including fragmentation of organic molecules.
Mass Spectrometry: Instrumentation, Interpretation, and Applications. Edited by Rolf Ekman, Jerzy Silberring, Ann M. Westman-Brinkmalm, and Agnieszka Kraj. Wiley, New York, 2009. 388 pp. $149.00. ISBN 978-0-471-71395-1.
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s the title indicates, this book is broken down into three parts. Part 1 focuses on instrumentation, Part 2 focuses on interpretation of data, and Part 3 has examples of applications. Part 1 contains four chapters that cover definitions (Ch. 1), instrument building blocks (Ch. 2), tandem mass spectrometry (Ch. 3), and separation methods (Ch. 4). Part 2 contains three chapters focused on interpreting data for structural information. One of those chapters (Ch. 5) is devoted to interpretation of data for organic molecules, and two chapters (Ch. 6 and 7) are focused on interpretation of proteins and peptides. Part 3 contains 10 chapters that cover a diverse array of applications including some that are likely relevant to natural products researchers. Chapter 1 provides a useful collection of definitions and standard abbreviations. Given the diversity of ionization techniques and mass analyzers, the focus of Chapter 2 will be quite useful for anyone new to natural products or new to mass spectrometry. Chapter 2 has a sufficient discussion of the most commonly used ionization techniques including methods that are less commonly used today, such as CI, EI, and FAB. Nonetheless, it is important for natural product chemists to understand some of these ionization techniques and the potential issues with those techniques compared to soft ionization methods such as electrospray ionization (ESI) and matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization (MALDI). With respect to mass analyzers, Chapter 2 discusses the fundamental principles underlying common mass analyzers. The level of detail is appropriate for those who have little background in mass spectrometry. Finally, Chapter 2 discusses in brief the common detectors used, including some strengths and weaknesses such as saturation of MCP detectors. The final part of Chapter 2 highlights aspects of tandem mass spectrometry, has an excellent discussion of the commonly used methods to fragment molecules, and highlights the benefit of methods such as electron capture dissociation (ECD) and electron transfer dissociation (ETD) for generating c- and z-type ions in peptides as well as characterizing post-translational modifications in proteins/peptides. Overall, Chapter 2 would serve as a good introduction to mass spectrometry for anyone new to the subject without details that would likely only be necessary for an operator. Chapter 4 is a short chapter (10 pages) that summarizes the basic idea of different separation types. This chapter also has a short discussion of ion mobility. With the increase in application of ion mobility spectrometry (IMS), the inclusion of this discussion would be important for a natural products researcher. © 2017 American Chemical Society and American Society of Pharmacognosy
Tim S. Bugni
University of Wisconsin at Madison Madison, Wisconsin, United States Published: January 20, 2017 574
DOI: 10.1021/acs.jnatprod.7b00030 J. Nat. Prod. 2017, 80, 574−575
Journal of Natural Products
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Book Review
AUTHOR INFORMATION
ORCID
Tim S. Bugni: 0000-0002-4502-3084
Notes
The author declares no competing financial interest.
575
DOI: 10.1021/acs.jnatprod.7b00030 J. Nat. Prod. 2017, 80, 574−575
