ANALYSIS OF SINGLE CELLS WITH CAPILLARY ELECTROPHORESIS ELECTROSPRAY-IONIZATION FOURIER-TRANSFORM ION-CYCLOTRON RESONANCE MASS-SPECTROMETRY

Recent results with on-line capillary electrophoresis (CE) electrospra y ionization (ESI) Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance (FTICR) m ass spectrometry suggest that CE/ESI-FTICR can provide a powerful tech nique for micro-sample analyses owing to the inherent sensitivity of t he technique and the enhanced information content derived from high-pe rformance mass measurements. Using micro-sampling methods and ion accu mulation techniques based on quadrupolar excitation, we demonstrate th at adequate sensitivity exists to characterize the hemoglobin from a s ingle human erythrocyte (approximate to 450 amol). In these studies ma ss spectra with average mass resolution in excess of 45 000 (FWHM) wer e obtained for both the alpha- and beta chain of hemoglobin following in-column lysing of a single erythrocyte.