Peptidic Natural Products (PNPs) are highly sought after bioactive compounds that include many antibiotic, antiviral and antitumor agents, immunosuppressors and toxins. Even though recent advancements in mass-spectrometry have led to the development of accurate sequencing methods for nonlinear (cyclic and branch-cyclic) peptides, requiring only picograms of input material, the identification of PNPs via a database search of mass spectra remains problematic. This holds particularly true when trying to evaluate the statistical significance of Peptide Spectrum Matches (PSM) especially when working with non-linear peptides that often contain non-standard amino acids, modifications and have an overall complex structure. In this paper we describe a new way of estimating the statistical significance of a PSM, defined by any peptide (including linear and non-linear), by using state-of-the-art Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods. In addition to the estimate itself our method also provides an uncertainty estimate in the form of confidence bounds, as well as an automatic simulation stopping rule that ensures that the sample size is sufficient to achieve the desired level of result accuracy.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication17th International Workshop on Algorithms in Bioinformatics, WABI 2017
PublisherSchloss Dagstuhl- Leibniz-Zentrum fur Informatik GmbH, Dagstuhl Publishing
Volume88
ISBN (Electronic)9783959770507
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Aug 2017
EventInternational Workshop on Algorithms in Bioinformatics - Boston, United States
Duration: 21 Aug 201723 Aug 2017
Conference number: 17
http://acm-bcb.org/WABI/2017/

Publication series

NameLeibniz International Proceedings in Informatics, LIPIcs
PublisherSchloss Dagstuhl- Leibniz-Zentrum fur Informatik GmbH, Dagstuhl Publishing
Volume88
ISSN (Electronic)1868-8969

Conference

ConferenceInternational Workshop on Algorithms in Bioinformatics
Abbreviated titleWABI 2017
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityBoston
Period21/08/1723/08/17
Internet address

    Research areas

  • Mass spectrometry, Natural products, Peptide spectrum matches, Statistical significance

    Scopus subject areas

  • Software

ID: 11802670