Quantitative determination of single-bead metal content from a peptide combinatorial library

An electrothermal vaporizer inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer (ETV-ICPMS) was used to quantitatively screen metals bound to single polystyrene (TentaGel) beads with immobilized oligopeptides. Tests were performed using ETV-ICPMS to screen a series of identical beads as well as a series of combinatorial library beads exposed to a multimetal solution composed of Mg2+, Mn2+, Ni2+, Cu2+, Cd2+, Eu2+, and Pb2+. The residual metal content remaining bound to the beads after acid extractions was also analyzed by solid sampling of the entire bead using oxygen ashing in the ETV. Nine beads (80 mesh, 0.25 mmol g(-1) nominal capacity) containing covalently attached polyaspartic acid (PLAsp; n = 20) showed metal extract concentrations in the range of 4-130 ng mL(-1). After normalizing by bead volume, the precision of capacity measurements in a single bead (7-14%) was primarily dictated by analysis error and contributions from bead diameter measurement with negligible contributions, surprisingly, from variations in site density from bead to bead. A sample combinatorial library of the sequence GXXGXXGXXGXX (X = cysteine, aspartic acid, or glutamic acid and G = glycine) (60 mesh, 0.25 mmol g(-1) nominal capacity) was also used to demonstrate the utility of this method. Metal extract concentrations ranged from 1 to 1300 ng mL(-1) with significant concentration variation between beads, indicating the individual selectivity on each bead. For these larger beads, analysis precision (i.e., capacity precision) was further improved to 3-10% due to the overall increase in bead metal content. Through metal extract determinations, ETV-ICPMS was shown to be a viable nondestructive tool for full metal characterization of "hit" sequences belonging to a combinatorial library.