I am unfamiliar to how MALDI-TOF MS can identify protein structure. I have read websites indicating that it can be done. However, I would like to know of how accurate are the results of MALDI-TOF MS vs. Xray crystallography. Does anyone have references that I may read regarding use of MALDI-TOF MS for protein structure determination? Thanks in advance.
What websites? This sounds very strange and I doubt you would get as much information as you would by doing a sequence search of the PDB: https://www.rcsb.org/pdb/home/home.do or http://www.ebi.ac.uk/pdbe-srv/PDBeXplore/sequence/
Both websites search the same database but their search options and presentation of results differ.
But it also depends on what you mean by protein structure. I would book a meeting with a mass spectrometrist and an x-ray crystallographer at your institution and present your questions to them. Remember to bring sequence files, SEC chromatograms etc.
MALDI-TOF MS can tell peptide molecular weight, peptide sequences, modifications etc, which in return may suggest the protein interactions if cross-linking sample used. The MALDI-TOF MS results sometime could be helpful for interpreting assays. It is far too much if someone claims that MALDI-TOF MS can determine protein structure. Currently protein structure determination is done by crystallography, EM, or NMR.
Thank you for the clarifications Mr Groftehauge and Mr. Zhang.
X-ray crystallography is the ultimate in protein 3D structure determination. MALDI-TOF mass spectroscopy is usually only used for preliminary analyses of a protein, before one is able to obtain an appropriately diffracting crystal of the protein. MALDI-TOF MS is just a fancier form of (regular/traditional) mass spectroscopy, where the sample is fragmented using laser energy instead of electrons.
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