Mass spectrometry a key tool for bioanalysis in life and health sciences

4 Mass spectrometry a key tool for bioanalysis in life and health sciences 

While straight MS analysis can yield important information in terms of identification, characterization and quantification of biomolecules, it becomes a much more powerful tool with further MS or when combined with other separation technologies. As noted earlier, these approaches include MS/MS, GC-MS, LC-MS and CE-MS. These methods have been extensively exploited in virtually all aspects of bioanalysis, and while fundamentally useful for peptide and protein analysis, these methods have also been used in the analysis of lipids, nucleic acids and a wide range of small molecules and drugs. The range of applications is obviously outside the scope of a book like this, but some indications of the uses of each of these techniques are given below. 

GC-MS has proven a particularly useful tool to measure hormone levels in biological fiuids. A key example of the use of this approach has been in the screening 

MALDI or LC/ESI each digested peptide for mass determination 

Search protein sequence databases with peptide sequences 

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