Native mass spectrometry of photosynthetic pigment-protein complexes

Native mass spectrometry (MS), or as is sometimes called native electrospray ionization allows proteins in their native or near-native states in solution to be introduced into the gas phase and interrogated by mass spectrometry. This approach is now a powerful tool to investigate protein complexes. This article reviews the background of native MS of protein complexes and describes its strengths, taking photosynthetic pigment-protein complexes as examples. Native MS can be utilized in combination with other MS-based approaches to obtain complementary information to that provided by tools such as X-ray crystallography and NMR spectroscopy to understand the structure-function relationships of protein complexes. When additional information beyond that provided by native MS is required, other MS-based strategies can be successfully applied to augment the results of native MS. (C) 2013 Federation of European Biochemical Societies. Published by Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.