The Road Ahead Challenges and Future Directions

Despite the multiple challenges faced by the top-down HX-MS, the outlook for this technique remains very bright. It has already made tremendous progress in the past decade, effectively transitioning from an esoteric curiosity in the field of experimental biophysics with very few followers to a powerful tool uniquely capable of solving complex problems related to protein higher-order structure and dynamics. It is clear that further developments in the top-down HX-MS will continue to expand the boundaries of this technique and eventually transform it into a routine tool in the experimental armamentarium of structural biology and biophysics. 

This work was supported by a grant ROl GM061666 from the National Institutes of Health. 

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