Computational and statistical methods for high-throughput mass spectrometry-based PTM analysis

Abstract

Cell signaling and functions heavily rely on post-translational modifications (PTMs) of proteins. Their high-throughput characterization is thus of utmost interest for multiple biological and medical investigations. In combination with efficient enrichment methods, peptide mass spectrometry analysis allows the quantitative comparison of thousands of modified peptides over different conditions. However, the large and complex datasets produced pose multiple data interpretation challenges, ranging from spectral interpretation to statistical and multivariate analyses. Here, we present a typical workflow to interpret such data.