Complexation of deprotonated carboxylic acids with arginine was investigated using collision-induced dissociation to probe the nature of isolated carboxylate-amino acid interactions as a function of anion size. Monocarboxylic CH3(CH2)(n)COO center dot Arg (n = 3-7, 9, 10) and dicarboxylic acid COOH(CH2)(n)COO center dot Arg (n = 3-5, 7-10) complexes were investigated. For the dicarboxylic acid clusters, chain length has a significant effect on the %fragmentation energies with the n = 9, 10 systems fragmenting at significantly lower energies than the corresponding shorter chain systems. Molecular mechanics calculations suggest that this fragmentation energy shift is associated with the longer-chain dicarboxylic acid-Arg clusters switching to ring structures. (c) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.