Characterising nucleic acid by mass spectrometry

摘要

The present invention provides a method for analysing a population of nucleic acid fragments each labelled with a mass label, which method comprises: i) ionising the population; ii) sorting the ionised population in a mass spectrometer according to mass into sub-populations each containing at least one labelled fragment; iii) cleaving each sub-population to release the mass label associated with each labelled fragment; iv) determining the mass of each released mass label by mass spectroscopy; and v) assigning each mass label to its associated fragment.