Homochiral or Heterochiral: A Systematic Study of Threonine Clusters Using a FT ICR Mass Spectrometer

The strong chiral preferences of some magic clusters of amino acids have attracted continually increasing interests due to their unique structures, properties and possible roles in homochirogenesis. However, how chirality can influence the generation and stability of cluster ions in a wild range of cluster sizes is still unknown for most amino acids. In this study, the preference for threonine clusters to form homochiral and heterochiral complex ions has been investigated by electrospray ionization (ESI) mass spectrometry. Abundant cluster [Thrn+mH]m+ ions (7 ≤ n ≤ 78, 1 ≤ m ≤ 5) have been observed for both samples of enantiopure (100% L) and racemic (50:50 L:D) threonine solutions. Further analyses of the spectra show that the [Thr14+2H]2+ ion is characterized by its most outstanding homochiral preference, and [Thr7+H]+ and [Thr8+H]+ ions also clearly exhibit their homochiral preferences. Although most of the triply charged clusters (20 ≤ n ≤ 36) are characterized by heterochiral preferences, the quadruply charged [Thrn+4H]4+ ions (40 ≤ n ≤ 59) have no obvious chiral preference in general. On the other hand, a weak homochiral preference exists for most of the quintuply charged ions observed in the experiment.