Human acute T-lymphoblastic leukemia cell line (CEM) treated with cisplatin, and the stable isotope labeling by amino acids in cell culture (SILAC) strategy were used to present an improved method of data processing in high-accuracy mass spectrometry (MS). By using peptide mass fingerprinting with low mass tolerance, we were able to utilize far more data retained in MS scans which would normally be missed by a standard processing method. This new way of data interpretation results in an improvement of the relevance of quantitation experiments and enabled us to search and quantify different types of posttranslational modifications. Furthermore, we used this technique to distinguish among different protein isoforms, commonly returned by Mascot search engine.
Copyright 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.