Reducing the haystack to find the needle: improved protein identification after fast elimination of non-interpretable peptide MS/MS spectra and noise reduction

摘要

BackgroundTandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) has become a standard method for identification of proteins extracted from biological samples but the huge number and the noise contamination of MS/MS spectra obstruct swift and reliable computer-aided interpretation. Typically, a minor fraction of the spectra per sample (most often, only a few %) and about 10% of the peaks per spectrum contribute to the final result if protein identification is not prevented by the noise at all.