A novel approach to speed up peptide sequencing via MS/MS spectra analysis

In proteomics, tandem mass spectrometry is the key technology for peptide sequencing from the cells. Different methods have been proposed to sequence peptides through tandem mass spectra. While the methods are capable of providing more robust and accurate results, they are also computationally expensive, and create a bottleneck in high throughput peptide identification. In this work, we introduce a novel approach to speedup peptide sequencing. In contrast to the traditional approaches, we conduct coarse comparison of spectral profiles to drastically shrink the size of candidate peptides. A fast algorithm has been developed for this goal. It is shown in our experiments that such an approach can significantly improve the speed for peptide sequencing.