PNNL

Abstract

Peptide identification following tandem mass spectrometry is usually achieved by matching the mass spectrum of an unidentified peptide to those available in a database. This methodology will be successful only if the peptide under investigation belongs to an available database. We present a proposal to use a Genetic Algorithm (GA) to construct amino acid sequences of peptides using only spectral features and then discuss some of the problems associated with this approach. The GA can potentially overcome some of the problems associated with real MS/MS data like incomplete or unclearly defined peaks and may prove to be a valuable tool in the proteomics field.