Although hydrogen-deuterium exchange mass spectrometry (HDX/MS) is well-established for the analysis of the structure and dynamics of proteins, it is currently not exploited for nucleic acids. Here we used DNA G-quadruplex structures as model systems to demonstrate that DNA oligonucleotides are amenable to in-solution HDX/MS in native conditions. In trimethylammonium acetate solutions and in soft source conditions, the protonated phosphate groups are fully backexchanged in the source, while the exchanged nucleobases remain labeled without detectable gas-phase back-exchange. As a result, the exchange rates depend strongly on the secondary structure (hydrogen bonding status) of the oligonucleotides, but neither on their charge state nor on the presence of non-specific adducts. We show that native mass spectrometry methods can measure these exchange rates on the second to the day time scale with high precision. Such combination of HDX with native MS opens promising avenues for the analysis of the structural and biophysical properties of oligonucleotides and their complexes.In-solution HDX/MS is increasingly used to study the structural dynamics and interactions of proteins, in particular since the advent of automated systems. It relies on measuring exchange rates of backbone amide hydrogens in a deuterium-rich buffer, because these rates are heavily dependent on hydrogen-bonding and solvent accessibility. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] Since all amino-acid (except prolines) possess an amide hydrogen, HDX/MS can effectively cover the entire sequence. HDX/MS is particularly valuable for proteins that are not amenable to X-Ray diffraction or NMR experiments, because of e.g. their large size, high dynamics, or limited availability. In this manuscript, we show that HDX/MS is also particularly well suited to study structured oligonucleotides ( Figure 1).Oligonucleotides contain several exchangeable sites: the 5'-and 3'-OH termini, the 2'-OH of RNA riboses (not explored herein), the phosphates, and the amino and imino hydrogens of bases. The -OH termini obviously do not cover the whole sequence, and are not good markers of the structure. The phosphate groups do cover the full sequence, but given their very low pKa (~ 1), all phosphate groups are fully deprotonated at physiological pH. 10 Some are neutralized during the electrospray process, but that may not provide a clear information on the oligonucleotide's structure and dynamics in the bulk solution.The nucleobases are involved in secondary structure formation via hydrogen bonds ( Figure 1A), and given that each base contains at least one exchangeable site (dG: 3, dA and dC: 2, dT: 1), they theoretically suffice to cover the whole sequence.Hydrogen exchange of nucleic acids with deuterium or tritium was in fact studied early on. Some of the earliest attempts at characterizing dsDNA breathing fluctuation on the minute time scale were made in the 1960s by H-T exchange quantified by scintillation counting. [11][12][13] The exchange was however too fast to resolve the surface ...