Mass spectrometric study on sodium ion induced central nucleotide deletion in the gas phase.

We report a mass spectrometric study on sodium ion induced central nucleotide deletion from protonated oligonucleotides (ONTs) and the concurrent recombination of the terminal nucleotides. To shed some light on the mechanism behind this intriguing fragmentation channel, we have studied the metastable decay of a number of different protonated hexameric and octameric oligonucleotides with 0-6 and 0-8 of their exchangeable protons replaced with sodium ions, respectively. In selected cases, we have also studied the further fragmentation of the parent ions after initial base loss. Our findings are concurrent with a reaction mechanism where the initial step is the elimination of a protonated, high proton affinity (PA) base from the center of the ONTs. This is followed by an elimination of a (next neighbour) nucleotide that contains a second high PA base and the concurrent recombination of the terminal nucleotides. To our knowledge, such central nucleotide deletion in the gas phase has only been reported in one previous study (Flosadóttir et al., J. Am. Soc. Mass Spectrom 20:689-696, 2009), and this is the first systematic approach to understand the mechanism behind this channel.