Stephen J. ValentineSteve's primary research interests are in the area of technology development for complex ‘omics mixture analyses. Over the last decade, he has held positions in industry and academia that have focused on development of gas-phase separations techniques coupled with mass spectrometry to improve the overall peak capacity for proteomics and metabolomics analyses. This work has resulted in the development of multidimensional ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) combined with mass spectrometry (MS) instrumentation. The new approach is extremely powerful offering improved peak capacity compared with traditional liquid chromatography (LC)-MS methods and can be performed in a fraction of the time. More recently, he has helped to develop the technique known as overtone mobility spectrometry (OMS). OMS shows great promise for extremely high-resolution mobility separations and has been demonstrated as a means for monitoring structural transformations of biological ions in the gas phase.
Currently his research group has developed a 1-m long drift tube that has been coupled to a LTQ mass spectrometer with electron transfer dissociation (ETD) capabilities. The drift tube will be used to perform comparative proteomic and metabolomics analyses. Multidimensional IMS-IMS and IMS-OMS instrumentation designs are currently being modeled to demonstrate capabilities for further enhancing the peak capacities afforded by these groundbreaking techniques. The use of rapid, high-resolution gas-phase separation strategies will provide our group with unrivaled comparative ‘omics analyses capabilities. |