Isomer and Conformer-Specific Mass Distribution-Based Isotopic Shifts in High-Resolution Cyclic Ion Mobility Separations

Herein, we present the use of mass distribution-based isotopic shifts in high-resolution cyclic ion mobility spectrometry-mass spectrometry (cIMS-MS)-based separations to characterize various isomeric species as well as conformers. Specifically, by using the observed relative arrival time values for the isotopologues found in the isotopic envelope after long pathlength cIMS-MS separations, we were able to distinguish dibromoaniline, dichloroaniline, and quaternary ammonium salt isomers, as well as a pair of 25-hydroxyvitamin D3 conformers based on their respective mass distribution-based shifts. Our observed shifts were highly reproducible and broadly applied to the isotopologues of various atoms (i.e., Cl, Br, and C). Additionally, through a control experiment, we determined that such shifts are indeed pathlength-independent, thus demonstrat-ing that our presented methodology could be readily extended to other high-resolution IMS-MS platforms. These results are the first characterization of conformers using mass distribution-based IMS-MS shifts, as well as the first use of a commercial cIMS-MS platform to characterize isomers via their mass distribution-based shifts. We anticipate that our methodology will have broad applicability for biological analytes and that mass distribution-based shifts could potentially act as an added dimension of analysis in existing IMS-MS workflows in omics-based research. Specifically, we envision that the development of a database of these mass distribution-based shifts could, for example, enable the identification of unknown metabolites in complex matrices.