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K-State Today

Division of Communications and Marketing
Kansas State University
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September 11, 2023

Alexandre Shvartsburg to present Chemistry Seminar

Submitted by Takashi Ito

Alexandre Shvartsburg, associate professor of chemistry at Wichita State University, will be the speaker for this week's Chemistry Seminar. Shvartsburg will present "High-Definition Differential Ion Mobility Spectrometry for Proteomics, Metabolomics, and Structural Biology" at 1:05 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 14, in 4 King Hall. 

Abstract: Complex biological and environmental samples generally require separations prior to mass spectrometry, or MS, traditionally pursued via chromatography or electrophoresis in solution. Those approaches are now supplemented or replaced by ion mobility spectrometry, or IMS, in gases, which provides the speed and distinct selectivity. While the original IMS was based on absolute ion mobility, new nonlinear methods including the differential IMS or FAIMS capture its evolution as a function of electric field. We will cover the development of high-resolution FAIMS coupled to MS and further instrumental stages such as electron transfer dissociation, or ETD, and ozone-induced dissociation, or OzID, for ultimate specificity. We will then showcase the applications to peptides, lipids and proteins, focusing on the separation and characterization of structural isomers such as histone proteoforms, other PTM localization variants, and D/L epimers, lipid isomers of various types — sn regio, double bond position, and cis/trans — and protein conformers. Novel differential IMS techniques relying on the dynamic pendular alignment of macromolecular dipoles in strong electric fields will be discussed.

Shvartsburg grew up and received his undergraduate education in Russia. He started in analytical chemistry in the U.S., earning a master's degree from the University of Nevada in 1995 and a doctorate from Northwestern in 1999. After an NSERC postdoctoral fellowship at York University in Toronto, Canada, and a stint at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in Jefferson, Arkansas, he moved to the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, in 2003 and academia in Wichita State in 2014. He also runs a start-up Heartland MS that makes the FAIMS and ion funnel systems for mass spectrometry available to other researchers. 

Shvartsburg's awards include the John Polanyi Prize of Ontario, M.T. Thomas Award of PNNL, Federal Laboratory Consortium and two R&D 100 awards, WSU Excellence in Research and Faculty of Distinction Awards, and the NSF CAREER and US Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.

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