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Expanded capabilities for proteomics, immunopeptidomics, spatial omics, metabolomics, structural biology, and biopharma applications
The updated instrument architecture of the Thermo Scientific Orbitrap Astral Zoom Mass Spectrometer advances performance across multiple applications through new and improved features.
Proteomics
Increase proteomics throughput, depth, and sensitivity for samples from single cells to plasma with the Orbitrap Astral Zoom Mass Spectrometer. Unlock additional capabilities for immunopeptidomics and spatial proteomics with faster stepped collision energy and higher sensitivity to more confidently and comprehensively characterize samples.
Faster throughput
The Orbitrap Astral Zoom Mass Spectrometer features pre-accumulation of ions in the bent trap, improving effective ion injection times and enabling higher scan rates of up to 270 Hz. These features combine to deliver a significant increase in performance for high throughput analyses, including the measurement of 300 samples per day – an analysis time of just 4.8 minutes from sample injection to sample injection.
High throughput proteomics performance comparison
Comparison of Thermo Scientific Orbitrap Astral Mass Spectrometer and Orbitrap Astral Zoom Mass Spectrometer performance for high throughput proteomics experiments run at 180 samples per day (SPD) or 300 SPD. The Orbitrap Astral Zoom MS delivers deeper coverage at the same throughput or similar proteome depth as the Oribtrap Astral MS at nearly double the throughput.
"The Orbitrap Astral MS has been a huge step forward in performance for us, but the data we have generated with the Orbitrap Astral Zoom MS is even more exciting – we can now routinely do 300 human proteomes per day. This allows us to do very systematic, systems biology type studies, where we get sufficient coverage of close to 8,000 proteins and more than 100,000 peptides across all the samples."
Jesper Olsen, Ph.D.,
Deputy Center Director, Professor, Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research, University of Copenhagen
Deeper coverage
Increase the depth of proteome coverage through improved ion utilization and scan rates to analyze more proteins of interest, expanding the scope of biomarker discovery.
Significantly increased depth and sequencing speed for plasma proteomics
Nearly double the number of identified plasma proteins with 10 times the protein sequencing speed with the Orbitrap Astral Zoom MS. Data courtesy of Yu-Ju Chen, Academia Sinica.
"With the super-fast scanning speed of the Orbitrap Astral Zoom Mass Spectrometer we are able to shorten the analysis time for 6,000 patient research samples from 1,000 days to 100 days."
Yu-Ju Chen, Ph.D.,
Distinguished Research Fellow, Institute of Chemistry, Academia Sinica
Higher sensitivity
The Orbitrap Astral Zoom Mass Spectrometer features an improved duty cycle from pre-accumulation and higher sensitivity using low-input mode, enhancing performance for applications including single-cell proteomics, immunopeptidomics, and spatial protoemics that require the highest sensitivity measurements. Leverage the modified Astral analyzer with the increased resolution of TMT HR mode to dramatically increase throughput with multiplexing to measure thousands of single cells in a single day.
Increased proteome depth and reproducibility for low-input samples
The higher sensitivity of the Orbitrap Astral Zoom MS provides an increased depth of coverage and improved reproducibility for low-input samples, with over 6,700 proteins identified from 250 pg of Pierce HeLa Protein Digest Standard and median protein CV values of 6% even at 50 pg loads from three replicate injections.
Ultimate depth for single-cell proteomics
The analysis of single HEK293F cells with the Orbitrap Astral Zoom MS identifies an average of 5,842 proteins across 24 individual single-cell analyses with excellent consistency from each single-cell injection, unlocking additional biological insights.
"The Orbitrap Astral Zoom MS improves the performance for single-cell proteomics by increasing the depth of coverage for DIA experiments but also by enabling very high throughput experiments through multiplexing with TMTpro to analyze over 2,000 single cells per day."
Erwin Schoof, Ph.D.,
Associate Professor, Department of Biotechnology and Biomedicine, Section for Medical Biotechnology, Cell Diversity Lab, Technical University of Denmark
Accurate and precise quantitation
Extend the dynamic range of quantitation with improved sensitivity and ion statistics to deliver superior quantitative accuracy and precision for sample inputs spanning picograms to micrograms using label-free quantitation with data-independent acquisition (LFQ-DIA) or labeling workflows, including higher multiplex relative quantitation with Thermo Scientific TMTpro 35-plex Label Reagents.
Accurate and precise LFQ-DIA with the Orbitrap Astral Zoom MS
Samples with known ratios of Human, Yeast, and E. coli were prepared with dilutions down to 100 pg and then analyzed with the Orbitrap Astral Zoom MS. Across the high quantitative dynamic range of sample inputs from 100 pg to 500 ng, the Orbitrap Astral Zoom MS demonstrates accurate and precise quantitation.
"The increased dynamic range of the Orbitrap Astral Zoom MS provides us with improved depth of coverage for low abundant fungal peptides during an infection. These peptides provide new biological insights into mechanisms driving fungal virulence and antifungal resistance."
Jennifer Geddes-McAlister, Ph.D.
Canada Research Chair, Associate Professor, University of Guelph
Spatial proteomics
Spatial proteomics techniques, like deep visual proteomics, enable spatially resolved analyses of samples from very low amounts of cells or tissues. The higher sensitivity of the Orbitrap Astral Zoom Mass Spectrometer combined with these methodologies enables deeper insights from these lower input samples to determine the localization and differential expression of proteins.
"Deep Visual Proteomics enables single-cell resolved analysis of tissue architecture and molecular pathology. In our recent work (Nordmann et al. Nature, 2024 and Rosenberger et al., Nature, 2025), we combined high sensitivity tip-based liquid chromatography methods with the Orbitrap Astral Mass Spectrometer to achieve unprecedented depth and precision in spatial proteomics. This was key to shed light and even curing one of two very serious diseases."
Matthias Mann, Ph.D.,
Proteomics and Signal Transduction, Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry and Director, Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research
Immunopeptidomics
With higher sensitivity and enhanced capabilities including faster stepped collision energy, the Orbitrap Astral Zoom Mass Spectrometer provides higher throughput, deeper coverage, and higher sensitivity to provide high quality data across the dynamic range of sample inputs for immunopeptidomics analyses. With full spectrum fragmentation data collected in either data-dependent or data-independent experiments, confidently annotate peptide sequences with comprehensive fragmentation coverage.
"The Orbitrap Astral Zoom Mass Spectrometer improves throughput, identification depth, and sensitivity to comprehensively profile immunopeptidomics samples, facilitating analyses from 10-100 times fewer cells per experiment. This advancement not only enables the investigation of more biologically relevant precious samples but also allows for testing more experimental conditions per study to open up new opportunities for profiling drug-induced perturbations to the immunopeptidome."
Greg Potts, Ph.D.,
Principal Research Scientist, Abbvie
Increased flexibility
With enhanced capabilities including faster stepped collision energy and the Biopharma option to enable Astral analyzer MS2 measurements for top-down and middle-down analyses, the Orbitrap Astral Zoom MS extends the addressable experimental space and significantly improves the performance for many applications.
Increased confidence in N-linked glycopeptide assignment
Analysis of enriched mouse brain with either stepped normalized collision energies of 25 and 35 or a fixed normalized collision energy of 35 using the Orbitrap Astral Zoom mass spectrometer operated in data- dependent acquisition (DDA) mode. While stepped and fixed collision energy methods identify a similar number of glycosites and unique glycopeptides, the stepped collision energy method provides a higher identification to more confidently characterize post-translationally modified peptides. Data courtesy of Joshua Coon, University of Wisconsin–Madison.
"We have been very impressed with the Orbitrap Astral Zoom MS, especially for its increased depth and confidence for analyzing critical post-translational modifications like glycosylation. In such applications the sensitivity, scan rate, and stepped collision energy makes a big difference."
Joshua Coon, Ph.D.,
Professor, Biomolecular Chemistry, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Metabolomics
The parallelization of the Orbitrap and Astral analyzers in the Orbitrap Astral Zoom Mass Spectrometer enables the simultaneous acquisition of panoramic high-resolution accurate mass full scan and comprehensive fragmentation data from a single injection. This synergistic combination enables optimized acquisition strategies to maximize the information from each injection, providing deeper insights into samples.
Simultaneous quantitation and discovery (SQUAD)
Gain a deeper understanding of biological systems in a single experimental injection. Measure both a list of hypothesis-driven targets and untargeted discovery data simultaneously with depth, accuracy, and precision.
Comprehensive untargeted compound detection and fragmentation
The Orbitrap Astral Zoom Mass Spectrometer can detect an increased number of compounds from Orbitrap analyzer full scan data through increased sensitivity and use of the enhanced dynamic range (eDR) mode. At the same time, fast and sensitive HRAM data is collected in the Astral analyzer to provide comprehensive fragmentation data from both data-dependent untargeted and targeted methods in a single injection.
Increased compound depth and fragmentation coverage for NIST SRM 1950 plasma using a SQUAD workflow
NIST SRM 1950 plasma sample analysis using a SQUAD workflow on the Orbitrap Astral Zoom MS provides an increased depth of compound detection from Orbitrap analyzer full scans and increased MS2 coverage with parallelized Astral analyzer scans in the untargeted data analysis while collecting targeted quantitation data for analytes of interest in a single injection.
"While intelligent DDA and rolling exclusion lists have been extremely helpful for common metabolites, the approach presents challenges for rare chemicals that only occur in a subset of samples. The capability to generate MS/MS data for nearly all compounds in a single, short run on an Orbitrap Astral Zoom MS is a huge step forward in metabolomics. It will be particularly important for characterizing exposure chemicals, such as drugs and certain food components."
Gary Patti, Ph.D.,
Professor, Departments of Chemistry, Genetics, and Medicine, Washington University, St. Louis
Simultaneous high sensitivity accurate and precise quantitation
The parallelized acquisition of Orbitrap and Astral analyzer data with the Orbitrap Astral Zoom MS is ideal for use with SQUAD workflows. In particular, the high speed and sensitivity of the Astral analyzer enables the acquisition of both comprehensive untargeted data-dependent MS2 fragmentation of compounds and targeted MS2 data in a single injection.
High dynamic range accurate and precise quantitation using a SQUAD workflow
Acquisition of targeted data on analytes of interest within a SQUAD workflow on NIST SRM 1950 extract enables a linear quantitative dynamic range of 7 orders of magnitude, with a lower limit of quantitation of 0.1 femtomole on column in parallel with untargeted data collection using a single injection.
"In exposomics we need dynamic instruments that can support combined targeted and untargeted data acquisition while simultaneously pushing the boundaries of sensitivity, resolution and MS2 coverage. The Orbitrap Astral Zoom Mass Spectrometer looks like it was designed with chemical exposomics in mind and should significantly boost research efforts to discover low abundance toxic substances in complex samples such as human blood, drinking water and air."
Jonathan Martin, Ph.D.,
Professor, Stockholm University, Scientific Director of the National Facility for Exposomics, SciLifeLab
More confident unknown compound annotation
The annotation of unknown compounds remains a significant challenge in untargeted small molecule analyses. With the Orbitrap Astral Zoom Mass Spectrometer the high resolution and mass accuracy of the Orbitrap analyzer full scan measurements provide confident formula assignment, including the use of fine isotopic patterns. In tandem, the Astral analyzer delivers comprehensive fragmentation of over 90% of compounds in a single injection, enabling structural annotation through matching to spectral libraries, substructure, and neutral loss classification, in silico prediction and matching, and formula assignment. The fragmentation capabilities of the Orbitrap Astral Zoom MS have been enhanced through the implementation of faster stepped collision energy, allowing for the use of not only one fixed fragmentation energy but also two or three stepped fragmentation energies at acquisition rates over 200 Hz. This use of multiple energies can produce additional diagnostic fragment ions for more confident compound annotation.
Comparison of the fragmentation of Naringin from a tea sample using a fixed single normalized collision energy (NCE) or stepped NCE with three energies demonstrating an improved spectral library matching to mzCloud score through the matching of additional fragment ions.
Structural biology
Decipher structural and functional dynamics
The Orbitrap Astral Zoom Mass Spectrometer empowers the analysis of proteins and protein complexes in their native biological state, enabling the study of molecular structures and dynamics. The improved capabilities of the Orbitrap Astral Zoom Mass Spectrometer, including faster stepped collision energy and enhanced Biopharma option for intact, top-down, and middle-down analysis, provide performance benefits for structural biology experiments.
Increased depth of identification for crosslinked samples
Analysis of DSSO-crosslinked E. coli ribosome proteins showing increases in crosslink identifications by 113% and crosslink spectrum matches (CSMs) by 369% versus Orbitrap-Orbitrap acquisition. The significant performance improvements with the Orbitrap Astral Zoom Mass Spectrometer provide more comprehensive structural biology insights into protein-protein interactions.
"The Orbitrap Astral Zoom Mass Spectrometer greatly benefits crosslink identification by its highly sensitive and ultra-fast Astral analyzer and its narrow window DIA capability. This instrument significantly boosts detection of protein interactions from highly complex and low abundant samples."
Fan Liu, Ph.D.,
Professor, Leibniz Research Institute for Molecular Pharmacology (FMP) Charité–Universitätsmedizin Berlin
Biopharma
Rapid characterization of biopharmaceuticals
The Orbitrap Astral Zoom Mass Spectrometer delivers faster throughput for multiple biopharma workflows. The fast and sensitive quantitative analysis of host-cell proteins can be performed with data-independent acquisition experiments at rates of up to hundreds of samples per day. The enhanced biopharma option of the Orbitrap Astral Zoom MS also includes support for the top-down and middle-down analysis of samples with the parallelized acquisition of intact data in the Orbitrap analyzer and fragmentation data in the Astral analyzer, enabling the rapid collection of both intact mass and sequence specific information.
Top-down analysis of a protein standard mixture with the Orbitrap Astral Zoom Mass Spectrometer using parallelized acquisition in the Orbitrap analyzer for intact analysis and Astral analyzer for MS2 fragmentation analysis.
For Research Use Only. Not for use in diagnostic procedures.