The Special Feature this month is jointly authored by Drs. Ruth Muchiri and Richard van Breemen, both of the Linus Pauling Institute, Oregon State University. Their article describes affinity selection–mass spectrometry (AS‐MS) and illustrates how this general approach can be used to assess the binding of candidate molecules to immobilized or soluble receptors.
AS‐MS is a family of MS‐based affinity methods that allow the screening of complex natural product extracts or combinatorial libraries without radiolabels or chromophores. The approach offers substantial improvements in speed and convenience over more conventional screening approaches and because pools of compounds can be screened, each containing hundreds to thousands of potential ligands, hundreds of thousands of compounds can be screened per day.
The combination of affinity selection and mass spectrometry is a powerful tool for the isolation, characterization and identification of the active constituents of complex mixtures and this clearly written and well‐illustrated Special Feature is an excellent introduction to AS‐MS and its potential applications.