MAP-MS! Get more Orbitrap dynamic range for free!

 

I had to sleep on this one and then find out that the coolest new toy I received for my lab needs to charge before I can try it out --

(not this paper - the fact I have to charge a device that I think will dramatically improve life in my lab and that while charging it I realized it has instructions I'm supposed to read) And now I think I get it. 

Remember BoxCar? I vaguely do, but it worked in sort of a similar way. Both try to take advantage of the fact that ion injection times on MS1 scans are really fast but Orbitraps are 

BoxCar works by chopping up your MS1 into lots of little DIA windows and then alternating between MS1 scans. 

Could you do something very similar but with great big boxes that wouldn't slow anything down at all? And if they were static could it be done with absolutely no obvious consequences? 

That's what MAP-MS appears to be! They study the distribution of trypitic peptides in humans to make their big window cuts and then multiplex their MS1 acquisitions to boost the lower abundance ions, reduce the highest abunance and everything seems to just work. 

On DIA experiments they get 11% more coverage without changing anything else. A lot of people will trade in a proteomics instrument for 11% more IDs, so that's pretty appealing. I do have concerns that maybe not every piece of sofware will love the data, but we won't know until we try it!