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Cold argon plasmas for non-enzymatic digestion of proteins and peptides

14 October 2025, Version 1
Working Paper
This content is an early or alternative research output and has not been peer-reviewed by Cambridge University Press at the time of posting.

Abstract

We have developed surface treatment techniques utilising radiofrequency current cold argon plasmas (RF-CAP) for non-enzymatic digestion of proteins and peptides. These plasmas are able to rapidly digest condensed-phase macromolecules with minimal sample preparation, producing predictable fragments visible by both LC-MS and MALDI imaging.

Keywords

Cold argon plasma
Fragmentation
Digestion
LC-MS
MALDI

Supplementary materials

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Supplementary information 1
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Contains materials and methods, as well as images and tables representative of results.
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Supplementary information 2
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Contains peak lists and annotations for ubiquitin and haemoglobin. Separate sheets are provided for control, ECD, and plasma-treated results.
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Supplementary weblinks

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Dataset - Science Data Bank
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ESI and MALDI data for the paper, hosted on scidb.cn
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Now Published

Cold argon plasmas for non-enzymatic digestion of macromolecules [opens in a new tab]
Daniel McGill, Daniel Simon, Siva Ramadurai, Felicia Green, Zoltan Takats journal article
Chemical Communications
Online publication date: 2026

Version History

Oct 14, 2025 Version 1

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The content is available under CC BY NC 4.0 [opens in a new tab]

DOI

10.26434/chemrxiv-2025-g8sqf
D O I: 10.26434/chemrxiv-2025-g8sqf [opens in a new tab]

Funding

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

Author’s competing interest statement

DM, DS, and ZT are co-inventors on a patent application related to the findings of this study (publication number WO/2024/256813).

Ethics

The author(s) have declared ethics committee/IRB approval is not relevant to this content

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