Trends on (elemental and molecular) mass spectrometry based strategies for speciation and metallomics

The capabilities of electrospray ionization (ESI) and matrix assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) to permit species identification in combination with inductively coupled plasma (ICP) mass spectrometry to conduct element-tagged species monitoring have been exploited for a number of applications in speciation studies over the years. In this review, we report the new trends in the combined application of these techniques to address the structural and quantitative insights for different speciation/metallomics issues including the monitoring of natural elemental labels and drug metabolism products as well as the characterization of metallic nanoparticles and their corresponding metal ions. In addition, the trends on the analysis of trace elements in single cells by elemental MS together with the exponential growth of the imaging experiments, are also covered. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.