Native Mass Spectrometry: Recent Progress and Remaining Challenges

Native mass spectrometry (nMS) has emerged as an important tool in studying the structure and function of macromolecules and their complexes in the gas phase. In this review, we cover recent advances in nMS and related techniques including sample preparation, instrumentation, activation methods, and data analysis software. These advances have enabled nMS-based techniques to address a variety of challenging questions in structural biology. The second half of this review highlights recent applications of these technologies and surveys the classes of complexes that can be studied with nMS. Complementarity of nMS to existing structural biology techniques and current challenges in nMS are also addressed.