Ian Webb

We are hiring at all levels for a tenure/tenure track position in molecular omics, broadly defined. Come be my colleague! indiana.peopleadmin.com/postings/30467

Advancing Mass Spectrometry for Biophysics and Structural Biology 2025 starts Sunday at Georgia Tech! We will have four posters and one “Hot Topic” talk from the group. Can’t wait!

IsoDec Tutorial 2: Analyzing LC-MS in the UniDec GUI with TopPIC search YouTube video by Michael T Marty

Two new IsoDec tutorial videos to go over top-down proteomics searching with a few different workflows, one with TopPIC and the other with MetaMorpheus @metamorpheus.bsky.social :

youtu.be/OTQbplEezLQ

and

youtu.be/56OZJph48BU

Determining β-Monosaccharide Head Group Composition with High-Resolution Cyclic Ion Mobility Separations Coupled to Tandem Mass Spectrometry as a First Step for Unknown Cerebroside Analysis Cerebrosides, a class of biologically important lipids, are comprised of a monosaccharide head group along with their ceramide tail. However, their ac…

Check out our latest work on Determining β-Monosaccharide Head Group Composition with High-Resolution Cyclic Ion Mobility Separations Coupled to Tandem Mass Spectrometry as a First Step for Unknown Cerebroside Analysis!

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Strategies for Acid and Amine Cross-linking and Labeling for Protein Structural Characterization Using Mass Spectrometry Cross-linking and covalent labeling are common tools for protein structural elucidation by mass spectrometry. However, despite the importance of electrostatic interactions in proteins, there are not m...

New paper from our group! pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Check out the latest editorial article in #IJMS, highlighting two exciting perspective articles by Ian Webb and Ahmed Hamid in the Young Scientist Feature collection.

Multidimensional Separations for Characterization of Isomeric PFAS Using SLIM High-Resolution Ion Mobility and Tandem Mass Spectrometry Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are synthetic organofluorine compounds that accumulate in the environment due to significant industrial use and resistance to degradation. PFAS are of global interest because of their environmental and health concerns. They exist in a variety of linear and nonlinear forms containing a variety of isomers, as well as differing functional headgroups for each class. That structural complexity requires advanced analytical techniques, beyond current high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) methods, for their accurate identification and quantification in a wide range of samples. Herein, we demonstrate the power of Structures for Lossless Ion Manipulations (SLIM)-based high-resolution ion mobility (HRIM) for separation of complex PFAS branched isomers. SLIM is integrated into a multidimensional LC-SLIM IM-MS/MS workflow, developed for the extensive characterization of a wide range of PFAS compounds. As we surveyed sulfonate and carboxylic acid classes of PFAS, we observed unique arrival time vs m/z trend lines that were representative of each class; these trend lines are important for allowing identification of emerging species based on their placement in that two-dimensional space. Next, we used complementary tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) approaches with all ion fragmentation (AIF), as well as energy-resolved MS/MS, to further investigate the structure of mobility-separated species. This allowed both investigation of fragmentation mechanism and identification of unique fragment ions that could allow differentiation of isomers when ion mobility was insufficient. Overall, the combination of chromatography, high-resolution SLIM, and MS/MS provided a comprehensive workflow capable of identifying unknown emerging PFAS compounds in complex environmental samples.

Congrats to Heidi on her first-author paper using high-resolution ion mobility and tandem mass spectrometry to differentiate challenging PFAS branched chain isomers. #TeamMassSpec

Improved separation of fentanyl isomers using metal cation adducts and high‐resolution ion mobility‐mass spectrometry Fentanyl has become a growing concern as a deadly drug of abuse. In this work, we use a novel ion mobility–mass spectrometry (IM-MS) approach with metal cation adducts and high-resolution demultiplex...

Recent article from Ralph Aderorho in Drug Testing and Analysis was recognized as one of the top 10 most-cited papers published in 2023! #TopCitedArticle

Surface-Induced Unfolding Reveals Unique Structural Features and Enhances Machine Learning Classification Models Native ion mobility-mass spectrometry combined with collision-induced unfolding (CIU) is a powerful analytical method for protein characterization, offering insights into structural stability and enab...

What a great end to spring break! The Gadkari Research Group’s first article is live on @pubs.acs.org Analytical Chemistry. Learn about how gas phase unfolding via surface induced dissociation can contribute useful information to your native mass spectrometry studies!

pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Very excited to announce that our lab was awarded the NSF CAREER to continue our efforts in studying isotopic shifts in ion mobility separations!

Two-dimensional isotopic shifts for steroid isomer delineation with high-resolution cyclic ion mobility separations - Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry Recently, the use of mass distribution–based isotopic shifts in high-resolution ion mobility spectrometry-mass spectrometry–based separations have enabled isomer delineation by measuring the relative ...

Check out our latest paper on two-dimensional isotopic shifts for steroid isomer delineation with high-resolution cyclic ion mobility separations!

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Experimental Evidence for Phosphorylation-Driven Allosteric Regulation of Alpha Synuclein Function Phosphorylation of serine 129 (pS129) in the intrinsically disordered protein alpha synuclein has long been associated with neurodegenerative disease. In the past several years, the functional relevan...

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... New preprint from our group that finds evidence of allosteric regulation of alpha synuclein via phosphorylation confirming a hypothesis from www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

““Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.””

Development of Electrostatic-to-Covalent Gas Phase Cross-linkers for Protein Structure Measurements by Mass Spectrometry The benefits of native mass spectrometry have led to the extensive study of proteins inside mass spectrometers in the gas phase. The expansion of native mass spectrometry requires novel tools for gai...

New Webb Lab paper from Kacy Black about developing ion/ion reagents for protein higher order structure studies.

pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10....

Any #TeamMassSpec going to be at the Biophysical Society Meeting? I’ll have a poster in the IDP section on Sunday.

From XKCD

Preprint of our first research article is live! Are you curious about:

How surface induced unfolding can benefit your research?

Reproducibility of gas phase unfolding measurements?

Rowan Matney has worked hard to answer these questions, and more!
#TeamMassSpec #Preprint
doi.org/10.26434/che...

New (to our group) mass spec day!

Is basic science undervalued? David Glanzman (UCLA) talks about the decline of 'middle class' labs and that "there is no empirical evidence that the translational approach accomplishes this [cures] any better than the traditional one. Claims to the contrary at this point are mere propaganda."

RIP Professor March x.com/profianwebb/...

Advancing Mass Spectrometry Advancing Mass Spectrometry for Biophysics and Structural Biology

Final conference dates, registration, and housing are now available for Advancing Mass Spectrometry for Biophysics and Structural Biology. We look forward to seeing everyone in Atlanta! #teammassspec advancingms.org