The Evolution of MALDI
If you hit them, they will fly – that's the basic concept behind MALDI, an ionization technique developed in the late 1980s to enable mass spectrometric analysis of large biomolecules. Despite early tepid reviews, MALDI-TOF (matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight) mass spectrometry arguably made large-scale proteomics possible, as the technique can volatilize large biomolecules quickly and efficiently without completely ripping them apart.
"[MALDI] opened the gate for mass spectrometry to the bio world," says Michael Karas of the University of Frankfurt, Germany, who co-invented the technique with Franz Hillenkamp in the late 1980s.
Often considered complementary to its sister "soft ionization" technique, electrospray ionization (ESI), MALDI wins points with proteomics researchers for its relative ease of use. "We've been lucky to have access to both electrospray and MALDI, but ... MALDI-TOF has really made it much easier to collect very high-quality data that allows us ...
