LC–MS solvent composition monitoring and chromatography alignment using mobile phase tracer molecules

In the field of proteomics, reproducible liquid chromatographic description of analytes is often a key element for the differentiation or identification of proteins or peptides for clinical or biological research projects. However, analyte identification by retention time can be problematic in proteomics where lack of standardization can result in significantly different chromatography for the same analytes analyzed on different machines. Here we present a novel method of monitoring the mobile phase gradient of LC–MS/MS analyses by monitoring the ion current signal intensities of tracer molecules dissolved in the mobile phase solvents. The tracers’ ion current signal intensities chronicled gradient fluctuations, did not adversely affect the number or quality of CID-based sequence identifications, and had lower run-to-run variance when compared to retention time.