Direct Observation of Sugar–Protein, Sugar–Sugar, and Sugar–Water Complexes by Cold‐Spray Ionization Time‐of‐Flight Mass Spectrometry

Abstract

Specificity in weak biomolecular interactions: A novel technique, cold-spray ionization, can detect the weak but specific noncovalent binding of carbohydrates to proteins, water, and to other carbohydrate molecules. It allows the determination of dissociation constants and can assist in computer simulations of putative receptor–ligand binding environments (see picture).