Increased power for the analysis of label-free LC-MS/MS proteomics data by combining spectral counts and peptide peak attributes

Mol Cell Proteomics. 2010 Dec;9(12):2704-18. doi: 10.1074/mcp.M110.002774. Epub 2010 Sep 7.

Abstract

Liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS)-based proteomics provides a wealth of information about proteins present in biological samples. In bottom-up LC-MS/MS-based proteomics, proteins are enzymatically digested into peptides prior to query by LC-MS/MS. Thus, the information directly available from the LC-MS/MS data is at the peptide level. If a protein-level analysis is desired, the peptide-level information must be rolled up into protein-level information. We propose a principal component analysis-based statistical method, ProPCA, for efficiently estimating relative protein abundance from bottom-up label-free LC-MS/MS data that incorporates both spectral count information and LC-MS peptide ion peak attributes, such as peak area, volume, or height. ProPCA may be used effectively with a variety of quantification platforms and is easily implemented. We show that ProPCA outperformed existing quantitative methods for peptide-protein roll-up, including spectral counting methods and other methods for combining LC-MS peptide peak attributes. The performance of ProPCA was validated using a data set derived from the LC-MS/MS analysis of a mixture of protein standards (the UPS2 proteomic dynamic range standard introduced by The Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities Proteomics Standards Research Group in 2006). Finally, we applied ProPCA to a comparative LC-MS/MS analysis of digested total cell lysates prepared for LC-MS/MS analysis by alternative lysis methods and show that ProPCA identified more differentially abundant proteins than competing methods.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Validation Study

MeSH terms

  • Chromatography, Liquid / methods*
  • Principal Component Analysis
  • Proteomics*
  • Reference Standards
  • Tandem Mass Spectrometry / methods*