ABSTRACT
Other Analytical Methods .................................................................................... 338 10.3.3 Recent Developments in MS Instrumentation (Potentially)
Useful for Noncovalent Complex Studies ............................................................. 340 10.4 MALDI-MS of Nucleic Acid-Peptide/Protein Complexes .............................................. 341
10.4.1 MALDI-MS of DNA Complexes .......................................................................... 342 10.4.2 MALDI-MS of RNA Complexes .......................................................................... 345
10.5 ESI-MS of Nucleic Acid-Peptide/Protein Complexes ..................................................... 347 10.5.1 ESI-MS of DNA Complexes ................................................................................. 347 10.5.2 ESI-MS of RNA Complexes ................................................................................. 357
10.6 Ribosomes and Viruses: MS Detection of Massive Noncovalent Complexes ................................................................................................... 360
10.7 Complementary Approaches ............................................................................................ 362 10.8 Conclusion and Future Prospects ..................................................................................... 363 References .................................................................................................................................. 363
The study of nucleic acid-peptide/protein interactions is a highly active research eld since such interactions are involved in many cellular processes, such as replication, regulation of gene expression, and DNA packaging. Nearly all the functions of nucleic acids are accomplished by interacting with proteins.1 R. D. Kornberg received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2006 for his studies on the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription.2 In 2006, A. Z. Fire Craig and C. Mello shared the Physiology/Medicine Nobel Prize for their discovery of RNA interference or gene silencing by double-stranded RNA.2,3 Both transcription and gene silencing processes involve nucleic acidprotein interactions. It is both fundamentally important and topical to understand at the molecular level the basis of many cellular processes involving nucleic acids, which range from transcriptiontranslation to DNA repair and DNA packaging in the cells.
