PNNL

Abstract

Accurate assignment of monoisotopic precursor masses to tandem mass spectrometric (MS/MS) data is a fundamental and critically important step for successful peptide identifications in mass spectrometry based proteomics. Here we describe an integrated approach that combines three previously reported methods of treating MS/MS data for precursor mass refinement. This combined method, “integrated Post-Experiment Monoisotopic Mass Refinement” (iPE MMR), integrates steps: 1) generation of refined MS/MS data by DeconMSn, 2) additional refinement of the resultant MS/MS data by a modified version of PE-MMR, and 3) elimination of systematic errors of precursor masses using DtaRefinery. iPE-MMR is the first method that utilizes all MS information from multiple MS scans of a precursor ion and multiple charge states of it in an MS scan to determine precursor mass. By combining the synergistic features of each of method, iPE MMR increases sensitivity in peptide identification and provides increased accuracy when applied to complex high-throughput proteomics data. iPE MMR also allows incorporating additional data processing step(s) or skipping step(s), if necessary, to enable new developments or applications of the tools, as each step of iPE MMR produces output data in a common and conventional format used in proteomics data processing.