Cerno Bioscience Demonstrates MassWorks sCLIPS for High Resolution FT-ICR Mass Spectrometers

Cerno Bioscience, in co-operation with Dr. Vladimir Tolstikov at the Genome Center, UC Davis, has demonstrated that the recently launched MassWorks™ sCLIPS™ (self Calibrated Line-shape Isotope Profile Search) capability can improve formula ID on high end FT-ICR MS systems.

By using Cerno’s patented calibration techniques, users of High Mass Accuracy (HMA) instruments can now improve the results of formula identification and obtain higher quality, reproducible data through line-shape calibration.

Using MassWorks sCLIPS, the latest addition to the MassWorks mass spectrometry software suite, the collaborative research was able to further improve formula ID by the use of Spectral Accuracy and thus help achieve unique formula determination.

MassWorks was originally launched in 2006, and received the prestigious Editors’ Choice Bronze Award at PITTCON 2006. MassWorks is a post acquisition software system using Cerno’s patented MS Integrity calibration technology to work directly with data from a wide range of mass spectrometers.

Formula ID normally requires mass measurements typically provided by high resolution Time-of-Flight (TOF), Orbitrap or FT-ICR instrumentation. With its resolving power reaching into 1,000,000:1, an FT-ICR instrument is capable of sub-ppm mass accuracy, the company says.

However, where true unknown formula ID is required in applications such as natural product or metabolomics research, even such impressive levels of mass accuracy could lead to many possible formulas, especially at masses of 400Da or above.

“How to go beyond mass accuracy and determine the correct formula amongst the many possible candidates becomes a problem crying out for a solution”, remarked Dr. Tolstikov, Director of Metabolomic Core Facility at UC Davis, and a long time user of Thermo Scientific FT-ICR MS.

Cerno’s sCLIPS technology, when applied to FT-ICR MS data, corrects the instrument line-shape and enables exact isotope modeling when comparing the MS response of an unknown ion against theoretically calculated responses for all possible candidate formulas. This allows spectral differences as small as 0.1% to be measured which can enable confident formula ID. One of the benefits of the approach is that it requires no known calibration ions, and instead utilizes the fully resolved monoisotopic peak of the unknown ion itself for the sCLIPS line-shape calibration.

Don Kuehl, VP of Product Development and Marketing for Cerno Bioscience comments, “This exciting new development further demonstrates the unique advantage of our line-shape calibration technology and the added power of Spectral Accuracy beyond mass accuracy. The new MassWorks software allows us to serve a broad range of MS markets, from the low end single quadrupole LC and GC/MS all the way up to the high end FT-ICR MS.”