METHOD OF IDENTIFYING PROTEIN WITH THE USE OF MASS SPECTROMETRY

摘要

It is intended to provide a method of specifying at a high accuracy a publicly known protein or a mutant of a publicly known protein originating in the same genomic gene as a subject protein based on the mass spectroscopic data of a plural number of peptide fragments obtained by digesting the subject protein to be analyzed with site-specific enzymes by referring to the base sequence of a gene encoding the publicly known protein on database and a presumed full-length amino acid sequences. In the above method, the measured molecular weight data of the peptide fragments originating in the subject protein, which are obtained by peptide fragmentation via a site-specific protein digestion treatment, are compared with estimated molecular weight data of the peptide fragments based on the presumed full-length amino acid sequence of a publicly known protein. Then the publicly known protein which is a candidate for the protein to be identified is specified at a high accuracy by examining the number of matching fragments and the continuousness in the amino acid sequences in matching fragments of the publicly known protein and, moreover, comparing mismatching fragments while presuming mutations therein.