Mass spectrometry (MS) is known as a useful analytical detection technique. Various types of information about the molecular weights and chemical structures of the peptides, proteins, carbohydrates, oligonucleotides, natural products, and drug metabolites could be achieved by the use of MS. This technique which was invented in 1898, is widely used for various molecular biology analysis purposes either alone or combined with other structural proteomics techniques because of its advantages. The principle of MS is to generate ions from either inorganic or organic compounds by any suitable method, to separate these ions by their mass-to-charge ratio (m/z) and to detect them qualitatively and quantitatively by their respective m/z and abundance. The analyte may be ionized thermally, by electric fields or by impacting energetic electrons, ions or photons. The first step in the mass spectrometric analysis of compounds is the production of gas-phase ions of the compound, basically by electron ionization. This molecular ion undergoes fragmentation.
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