Interconversion of Peptide Mass Spectral Libraries Derivatized with iTRAQ or TMT Labels.

Derivitization of peptides with isobaric tags such as iTRAQ and TMT is widely employed in proteomics due to their compatibility with multiplex quantitative measurements. We recently made publicly available a large peptide library derived from iTRAQ 4-plex labeled spectra. This resource has not been used for identifying peptides labeled with related tags with different masses, because values for virtually all masses of precursor and most product ions would differ for ions containing the different tags as well as containing different tag-specific peaks. We describe a method for interconverting spectra from iTRAQ 4-plex to TMT (6- and 10-plex) and to iTRAQ 8-plex. We interconvert spectra by appropriately mass shifting sequence ions and discarding derivative-specific peaks. After this "cleaning" of search spectra, we demonstrate that the converted libraries perform well in terms of peptide spectral matches. This is demonstrated by comparing results using sequence database searches as well as by comparing search effectiveness using original and converted libraries. At 1% FDR TMT labeled query spectra match 97% as many spectra against a converted iTRAQ library as compared to an original TMT library. Overall this interconversion strategy provides a practical way to extend results from one derivatization method to others that share related chemistry and do not significantly alter fragmentation profiles.

A Description of the Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium (CPTAC) Common Data Analysis Pipeline.

The Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium (CPTAC) has produced large proteomics data sets from the mass spectrometric interrogation of tumor samples previously analyzed by The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) program. The availability of the genomic and proteomic data is enabling proteogenomic study for both reference (i.e., contained in major sequence databases) and nonreference markers of cancer. The CPTAC laboratories have focused on colon, breast, and ovarian tissues in the first round of analyses; spectra from these data sets were produced from 2D liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry analyses and represent deep coverage. To reduce the variability introduced by disparate data analysis platforms (e.g., software packages, versions, parameters, sequence databases, etc.), the CPTAC Common Data Analysis Platform (CDAP) was created. The CDAP produces both peptide-spectrum-match (PSM) reports and gene-level reports. The pipeline processes raw mass spectrometry data according to the following: (1) peak-picking and quantitative data extraction, (2) database searching, (3) gene-based protein parsimony, and (4) false-discovery rate-based filtering. The pipeline also produces localization scores for the phosphopeptide enrichment studies using the PhosphoRS program. Quantitative information for each of the data sets is specific to the sample processing, with PSM and protein reports containing the spectrum-level or gene-level ("rolled-up") precursor peak areas and spectral counts for label-free or reporter ion log-ratios for 4plex iTRAQ. The reports are available in simple tab-delimited formats and, for the PSM-reports, in mzIdentML. The goal of the CDAP is to provide standard, uniform reports for all of the CPTAC data to enable comparisons between different samples and cancer types as well as across the major omics fields.

Tandem mass spectral libraries of peptides in digests of individual proteins: Human Serum Albumin (HSA).

This work presents a method for creating a mass spectral library containing tandem spectra of identifiable peptide ions in the tryptic digestion of a single protein. Human serum albumin (HSA(1)) was selected for this purpose owing to its ubiquity, high level of characterization and availability of digest data. The underlying experimental data consisted of ∼3000 one-dimensional LC-ESI-MS/MS runs with ion-trap fragmentation. In order to generate a wide range of peptides, studies covered a broad set of instrument and digestion conditions using multiple sources of HSA and trypsin. Computer methods were developed to enable the reliable identification and reference spectrum extraction of all peptide ions identifiable by current sequence search methods. This process made use of both MS2 (tandem) spectra and MS1 (electrospray) data. Identified spectra were generated for 2918 different peptide ions, using a variety of manually-validated filters to ensure spectrum quality and identification reliability. The resulting library was composed of 10% conventional tryptic and 29% semitryptic peptide ions, along with 42% tryptic peptide ions with known or unknown modifications, which included both analytical artifacts and post-translational modifications (PTMs) present in the original HSA. The remaining 19% contained unexpected missed-cleavages or were under/over alkylated. The methods described can be extended to create equivalent spectral libraries for any target protein. Such libraries have a number of applications in addition to their known advantages of speed and sensitivity, including the ready re-identification of known PTMs, rejection of artifact spectra and a means of assessing sample and digestion quality.

Assessing data quality of peptide mass spectra obtained by quadrupole ion trap mass spectrometry.

An algorithm is introduced to assess spectral quality for peptide CID spectra acquired by a quadrupole ion trap mass spectrometer. The method employs a quadratic discriminant function calibrated with manually classified 'bad' and 'good' quality spectra, producing a single 'spectral quality' score. Many spectra examined that do not have significant matches are assessed to have good spectral quality, indicating that advances in search methods may yield substantial improvements in results.