24-Hour Lock Mass Protection

The positive role and application of highly accurate mass measurements in proteomics is well documented. The new generation of hybrid FTMS and Q-TOF instruments, including the LTQ-Orbitrap (OT), is remarkable in their ability to routinely produce single-digit to subppm statistical mass accuracy while maintaining high analytical sensitivity. The use of mass calibrants (lock masses) to reduce the systematic error of mass-to-charge measurements has also been reported and, in some cases, incorporated in the instrument control software by the instrument manufacturers. We evaluated the use of one such calibrant in the OT (e.g., polydimethylcyclosiloxane, PCM) to study its impact on the rate of phosphopeptide annotation and found it to lack robustness under normal laboratory conditions. Therefore, we devised a strategy to improve its performance by increasing the external abundance of calibrant molecules in laboratory air. This resulted in a more robust performance of the preprogrammed lock mass recalibration feature as evidenced by improvements in both statistical mass accuracy and peptide annotation rates.