Seminar Title: "Mass Spectrometry from Atoms to Metabolites: Fundamentals and Applications of ICP-MS and Laser Ablation Electrospray Ionization MS."
One approach to chemical analysis by mass spectrometry (MS) is to use an ion source that converts the sample into atomic ions, i. e., ICP-MS. Basic instrumentation, capabilities and scientific uses of ICP-MS will be described, including standard applications and new ones such as a) discovery of entirely new elements, and b) large-scale screening of antibody binding in biomedical research. Areas of new research will also be discussed.
The second, more common approach is to use an ion source that produces gas-phase ions from the analyte molecules without fragmenting them. There are many such sources; our work combines two of them, laser ablation (LA) for solid sampling plus electrospray ionization (ESI) for supplemental ionization. This combination is amenable to applications that employ mass spectrometry imaging. We use this LAESI-MS method for large scale identification of metabolite compounds in plants.
Link to Professor Houk's Research: http://www.chem.iastate.edu/faculty/Robert_Houk