VATIS UPDATE Article

Scientists from ProteomeTools, Germany, have reported the synthesis of a library of more than 330,000 reference peptides (termed PROPEL for ProteomeTools Peptide Library) representing essentially all canonical proteins of the human proteome. All peptides were analysed by multi-modal liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS), creating a compendium of millions of very high quality reference spectra (termed PROSPECT for ProteomeTools Spectrum Compendium).

The study illustrates the utility of these reagents and data to verify protein identifications from sparse observations and to predict the behaviour of peptides during liquid chromatography and tandem mass spectrometry. The consortium of TUM, JPT Peptide Technologies (JPT), SAP and Thermo Fisher Scientific has made the vast quantity of data freely available to the scientific community to enable scientists and to foster collaboration around the globe.

Going forward, the ProteomeTools project will generate a further one million peptides and corresponding spectra with a focus on splice variants, cancer mutations and post-translational modifications such as phosphorylation, acetylation and ubiquitinylation. Using the new resources, the scientists will study human proteomes with the aim of turning the vast amount of molecular information on the human proteome into new reagents, equipment, workflows, assays and software to enhance the application of proteomics in both science and medicine.