Development of native mass spectrometry with nanoelectrospray ionization coupled to size exclusion chromatography for proteins.

We created an online SEC/nanoESI system and evaluated its utility for the analysis of various proteins in conventional measurement solvent and nonvolatile buffer. As a result, the structural stability and resolution of the proteins were found to be sufficient when using online buffer exchange. Therefore, this online SEC/nanoESI system would be a useful technique for obtaining mass spectra of various proteins automatically with good resolution, simply by loading samples into an autosampler.