Mass spectrometry (MS) is not just about proteomics, though its star in that field certainly shines bright. As anyone in the drug discovery, food science, petroleum, or chemistry industries can tell you, mass spec is considerably broader than that.
“Traditionally it was a technique for looking at relatively small compounds across environmental issues, industrial applications, contaminants, and so on,” says John Callahan, Chief of the Spectroscopy and Mass Spectrometry Branch of the Division of Analytical Chemistry, Office of Regulatory Science, at the US Food and Drug Administration.
Partly that’s because existing ionization techniques were too harsh for biomolecular work; only the relatively recent discovery of techniques such as MALDI and ESI, which can ionize proteins without shattering them in the process, has enabled the shift towards life science applications that we see today.
Yet despite this shifting focus, MS continues to play key roles in everything from nanotech process development ...
