MS/MS - Difference b/w MS/MS and Maldi-TOF (Oct/29/2008 )

hello every one,

any body know what is the difference between MS/MS and MALDI-TOIF ?

Which one is best? doing MS-MS can we know the protein sequence ?

thanks in advance.

alie.

Hi alie,
well, in MALDI-TOF you get what is called PMF (peptide mass fingerprint) of your protein of interest (supposing you have separated your proteins with e.g. 2DE). Choosing to do MALDI-TOF-TOF (MS/MS) you select a number of those peptides and you break them to smaller fragments which - through certain algorithms - can be sequenced.
You can identify your protein both ways, but as far as I have understood myself, it is much more secure if you have a positive ID from your MS/MS analysis, since this is based on actual peptide sequence.

good luck!

Ithace