Reviewers

Abstract

Mass spectroscopy is an analytical technique that identifies biomolecules or proteins present in biological samples and is also useful for studies on protein–protein interactions. The basic principle involves the fragmentation of a compound or molecule into charged species, which are accelerated, deflected, and finally focused on a detector according to their mass and charge ratio. Ion deflection is based on charge, mass, and velocity, ions separation is based on mass to charge (m/z) ratio, and detection is proportional to abundance of ions. This chapter further discusses the anomalies involved in the raw data acquisition, and further processing and interpreting the mass spectrum. For data acquisition, peaks are identified based on preset values from a survey scan and are further taken in for MS/MS analysis. Peptide fragment ion mass is determined for each peak obtained from MS/MS spectrum and subjected to peptide scoring through database search. Protein is identified from the correctly identified peptide scoring.