Peptide-Centric Approaches Provide an Alternative Perspective To Re-Examine Quantitative Proteomic Data

Anal Chem. 2016 Feb 16;88(4):1973-8. doi: 10.1021/acs.analchem.5b04148. Epub 2016 Jan 29.

Abstract

Quantitative proteomics can provide rich information on changes in biological functions and processes. However, its accuracy is affected by the inherent information degeneration found in bottom-up proteomics. Therefore, the precise protein inference from identified peptides can be mistaken since an ad hoc rule is used for generating a list of protein groups that depends on both the sample type and the sampling depth. Herein, we propose an alternative approach for examining quantitative proteomic data which is peptide-centric instead of protein-centric. We discuss the feasibility of the peptide-centric approach which was tested on several quantitative proteomic data sets. We show that peptide-centric quantification has several advantages over protein level analysis: (1) it is more sensitive for sample segregation, (2) it avoids the issues associated with protein inference, and (3) it can retrieve significant peptides lost in protein-centric quantification for further downstream analysis.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Amino Acid Sequence
  • Molecular Sequence Data
  • Peptides / analysis*
  • Peptides / chemistry
  • Principal Component Analysis
  • Proteins / chemistry
  • Proteomics / methods*
  • Spectrometry, Mass, Electrospray Ionization

Substances

  • Peptides
  • Proteins