  Fundamental questions in ion mobility spectrometry have practical
implications for analytical applications in general, and omics in particular,
in three respects. (1) Understanding how ion mobility and collision cross
section values depend on the collision gas, on the electric field and on
temperature is crucial to ascertain their transferability across instrumental
platforms. (2) Predicting collision cross section values for new analytes is
necessary to exploit the full potential of ion mobility in discovery workflows.
(3) Finally, understanding the fate of ion structures in the gas phase is
essential to infer meaningful information on solution structures based on
gas-phase ion mobility measurements. We review here the most recent advances in
ion mobility fundamentals, relevant to these three aspects.
