About Us
The Mass Spectrometry Facility (MSF) in the Department of Chemistry provides staff services and walk-up access to a variety of mass spectrometry instruments suitable for the analysis of small molecules, peptides/proteins and nucleic acids. The MSF provides services principally to faculty research groups in Chemistry (60%) and other UC departments/schools (35%), but can also accept samples from outside academic/non-profit and commerical clients (5%).
The MSF operates 21 instruments that are equipped with liquid chromatography (LC), gas chromatography (GC) or matrix assisted laser desorption (MALDI) input sources coupled to quadrupole or time-of-flight (TOF) MS systems. All instruments have extensive sets of pre-programmed methods availble that are suitable for the majority of samples typically encountered; method customization can also be accommodated.
Instruments include:
- Waters G2-XS QTOF
- Waters Synapt G2 (x2)
- Waters QTOF-2
- Waters Q-TOF Premier
- Waters LCT Premier (x2)
- Waters LCT Classic (x2)
- Waters Quattro Premier
- Water TQ Absolute
- Waters GCT Premier
- Agilent 610 LC-MS TOF
- Shimadzu IT-TOF
- Thermo LTQ-XL Orbitrap
- Thermo TriPlus Ultra GC-MS (liquid/headspace, SPME)
- Thermo GC-MS/FID
- Agilent GC-MS/FID w/ TD (volatiles)
- Agilent GC-FID/TCD (gases)
- AB Sciex 5800 MALDI-TOF
- Bruker ultrafleXtreme (imaging mass spectrometry)
- Metrohm 940 Vario IC Pro (ion chromatography)
- various Agilent/Waters/Beckman HPLC systems.
MSF staff provide regular weekly user/instrument training sessions, project consultation, assistance with method development, advanced MS services and data analyses. Qualified trained users may access the facility and instruments 24/7 and are encouraged to run their own samples. Consequently, users can often obtain results wihtin minutes. Core staff services include: accurate mass molecular formula validation, exact mass measurements of intact peptide/protein/oligonucleotides, peptide sequencing, post-translational modifications (PTMs), targeted and untargeted metabolomics including triplequad quantitation, and imaging mass spectrometry applications.
For more information on services and training, contact