PTMVision: An Interactive Visualization Webserver for Post-translational Modifications of Proteins

Abstract

Recent improvements in methods and instruments used in mass spectrometry have greatly enhanced the detection of protein post-translational modifications (PTMs). On the computational side, the adoption of open modification search strategies now allows for the identification of a wide variety of PTMs, potentially revealing hundreds to thousands of distinct modifications in biological samples. While the observable part of the proteome is continuously growing, the visualization and interpretation of this vast amount of data in a comprehensive fashion is not yet possible. There is a clear need for methods to easily investigate the PTM landscape and to thoroughly examine modifications on proteins of interest from acquired mass spectrometry data. We present PTMVision, a web server providing an intuitive and simple way to interactively explore PTMs identified in mass spectrometry-based proteomics experiments and to analyze the modification sites of proteins within relevant context. It offers a variety of tools to visualize the PTM landscape from different angles and at different levels, such as 3D structures and contact maps, UniMod classification summaries, and site specific overviews. The web server’s user-friendly interface ensures accessibility across diverse scientific backgrounds. PTMVision is available at https://ptmvision-tuevis.cs.uni-tuebingen.de/.