PNNL

Abstract

High-throughput proteomics is rapidly evolving to require high mass measurement accuracy for a variety of different applications. Increased mass measurement accuracy in bottom-up proteomics specifically allows for an improved ability to distinguish and characterize detected MS features, which may in turn be identified by, e.g., matching to entries in a database for both precursor and fragmentation mass identification methods. Many tools exist with which to score the identification of peptides from LC-MS/MS measurements or to assess matches to an accurate mass and time (AMT) tag database, but these two calculations remain distinctly unrelated. Here we present a statistical method, Statistical Tools for AMT tag Confidence (STAC), which extends our previous work incorporating prior probabilities of correct sequence identification from LC-MS/MS, as well as the quality with which LC-MS features match AMT tags, to evaluate peptide identification confidence. Compared to existing tools, we are able to obtain significantly more high-confidence peptide identifications at a given false discovery rate and additionally assign confidence estimates to individual peptide identifications. Freely available software implementations of STAC are available in both command line and as a Windows graphical application.