Shotgun Protein Sequencing

Although snake venom proteins have been proven instrumental in the design of blood clotting and cytostatic breast cancer drugs, the main method in use to sequence these unknown proteins is still the low-throughput process of Edman degradation. Moreover, the common approach to MS/MS protein sequence identification is limited in that it focuses on the identification of single MS/MS spectra from mostly non-overlapping peptides, insufficient for whole protein reconstruction. Having shown that, for samples containing only purified proteins, large portions of the protein sequence can be recovered by combining multiple MS/MS spectra from overlapping peptides, we now extend the Shotgun Protein Sequencing approach to the analysis of mixtures of modified proteins. A mixture of proteins from crotalus atrox (western diamondback rattlesnake) venom was analyzed using LC/MS/MS and the correct overlaps between MS/MS spectra reliably identified. These overlaps were then assembled into multiple a...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: WABI
• Authors: Pavel A. Pevzner
• Keywords: Algorithms, MS/MS Spectra, Protein, Venom Proteins, WABI 2007