Differentiation of a pair of diastereomeric tertiarybutoxycarbonylprolylproline ethyl esters by collision-induced dissociation of sodium adduct ions in electrospray ionization mass spectrometry and evidence for chiral recognition byab initio molecular orbital calculations

The fragmentation of the sodium adduct ions for tert-butoxycarbonyl-L-prolyl-L-proline ethyl ester (Boc-L-Pro-L-Pro-OEt) was compared with that for Boc-D-Pro-L-Pro-OEt in positive-ion electrospray ionization (ESI) mass spectrometry. In the collision-induced dissociation (CID) mass spectra of the [M + Na](+) ions, the abundance of the [M + Na - C(CH(3))(3) + H](+) ion, which is due to the loss of a tert-butyl group from the [M + Na](+) ion for Boc-D-Pro-L-Pro-OEt, was about eight times higher than that for Boc-L-Pro-L-Pro-OEt. In addition, in the CID spectra of the sodium adduct fragment ion ([M + Na - Boc + H](+)), the abundance of the [M + Na - Boc - prolylresidue + H](+) ion, which is due to the loss of prolyl residue from the [M + Na - Boc + H](+) ion for Boc-L-Pro-L-Pro-OEt, was about five times higher than that for Boc-D-Pro-L-Pro-OEt. These results indicate that Boc-L-Pro-L-Pro-OEt was distinguished from Boc-D-Pro-L-Pro-OEt by the CID mass spectra of the sodium adduct ions in ESI mass spectrometry. The optimized geometries of the [M + Na](+) and the [M + Na - Boc + H](+) ions calculated by ab initio molecular orbital calculations suggest that the chiral recognition of these diastereomers was due to the difference of the orientation of a sodium ion to the oxygen and nitrogen atoms in dipeptide derivatives, and to the difference of the total energies between them.