Peptide labeling with isobaric tags yields higher identification rates using iTRAQ 4-plex compared to TMT 6-plex and...

Peptide labeling with isobaric tags has become a popular technique in quantitative shotgun proteomics. Using two different samples viz. a protein mixture and HeLa extracts, we show that three commercially available isobaric tags differ with regard to peptide identification rates: The number of identified proteins and peptides was largest with iTRAQ 4-plex, followed by TMT 6-plex, and smallest with iTRAQ 8-plex. In all experiments, we employed a previously described method where two scans were acquired for each precursor on an LTQ Orbitrap: A CID scan under standard settings for identification, and a HCD scan for quantification. The observed differences in identification rates were similar when data was searched with either Mascot or Sequest. We consider these findings to be the result of a combination of several factors, most notably prominent ions in CID spectra as a consequence of loss of fragments of the label tag from precursor ions. These fragment ions cannot be explained by current search engines and were observed to have a negative impact on peptide scores.