This Letter reviews efforts made to elucidate the mechanism by which electron-capture and electron-transfer dissociation bond cleavages occur in mass spectrometry. The primary issues include where in the parent ion the electron initially attaches, whether the energy released in this initial electron-capture step is key to determining which bonds will cleave, whether the electron can migrate from the site to which it initially attaches to other sites in the parent ion, and, if so, over what distances and at what rates, and why, in polypeptides, one finds disulfide and N-C-alpha bond cleavage primarily. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.