N-Cα Bond Cleavage of Zinc-Polyhistidine Complexes in Electron Transfer Dissociation Mediated by Zwitterion Formation: Experimental Evidence and Theoretical Analysis of the Utah-Washington Model.

Electron capture dissociation (ECD) and electron transfer dissociation (ETD) of gas-phase ions are widely used for peptide/protein sequencing by mass spectrometry. To understand the general mechanism of ECD/ETD of peptides, we focused on the ETD fragmentation of metal-peptide complexes in the absence of remote protons. Since Zn(2+) strongly binds to neutral histidine residues in peptides, Zn(2+)-polyhistidine complexation does not generate any remote protons. However, in the absence of remote protons, electron transfer to the Zn(2+)-polyhistidine complex induced the N-Cα bond cleavage. The formation pathway for the ETD products was investigated by density functional theory calculations. The calculations showed that the charge-reduced zinc-peptide radical, [M + Zn](•+), can exist in the low-energy zwitterionic amide π* states, which underwent homolytic N-Cα bond dissociation. The homolytic cleavage resulted in the donation of an electron from the N-Cα bond to the nitrogen atom, producing an iminoenol c' anion. The counterpart z(•) radical contained a radical site on the α-carbon atom. The iminoenol c' anion then abstracted a proton to presumably form the more stable amide c' fragment. The current experimental and computational joint study strongly suggested that the N-Cα bond cleavage occurred through the aminoketyl radical-anion formation for Zn(2+)-polyhistidine complexes in ETD.