@@ -476,3 +476,37 @@ In bottom-up proteomics, two different kinds of mass spectrometric data are requ
- The #mz; values of the fragments (the product ions) of the peptidic precursor ion that has undergone an MS/MS gas phase fragmentation#footnote[Most often, that fragmentation step is performed using collisionally-activated dissociation (CID). In this process, the peptidic precursor ion is first isolated in the gas phase on the basis of its #mz; value and then is accelerated against a gas #quote[fog] inside of the collision cell of
the instrument. The ion hits gas molecules multiple times, acquires a lot of energy and finally breaks.].
These two kinds of data are necessary because the protein identification
process is based on searches in protein databases using the precursion ions'
#mz;valueandthe#mz;valuesofthation's fragments when it is
fragmented. The way the protein databases are used as the substrate of these
searches is described in the next section.
=== The Protein Databases and Their Use<sect_the-protein-databases-and-their-use>
The previous section ended on the idea that the protein identification
process, that is based on the analysis of all the peptides of a peptidic
mixture resulting from the endoproteolysis of a sample containing many
proteins, requires searches into protein databases.
A bottom-up proteomics experiment typically needs at least one protein database: a database listing all the known proteins of the organism from which the initial sample of proteins was prepared. That organism might be a bacterium, a Eucaryote, like a fungus, a protist, a plant, a mammalian#ellipsis; Optional databases might be used, like protein databases listing all known protein contaminants, for example.
The protein databases are files in the following FASTA format: