Integrated identification and quantification error probabilities for shotgun proteomics

• Protein quantification by label-free shotgun proteomics experiments is plagued by a multitude of error sources. Typical pipelines for identifying differentially expressed proteins use intermediate filters in an attempt to control the error rate. However, they often ignore certain error sources and, moreover, regard filtered lists as completely correct in subsequent steps. These two indiscretions can easily lead to a loss of control of the false discovery rate (FDR). We propose a probabilistic graphical model, Triqler, that propagates error information through all steps, employing distributions in favor of point estimates, most notably for missing value imputation. The model outputs posterior probabilities for fold changes between treatment groups, highlighting uncertainty rather than hiding it. We analyzed 3 engineered datasets and achieved FDR control and high sensitivity, even for truly absent proteins. In a bladder cancer clinical dataset we discovered 35 proteins at 5% FDR, with the original study discovering none at this threshold. Compellingly, these proteins showed enrichment for functional annotation terms. The model executes in minutes and is freely available at https://pypi.org/project/triqler/.

Ämnesord

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap -- Bioinformatik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences -- Bioinformatics (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

mass spectrometry - LC-MS/MS

statistical analysis

data processing and analysis

protein quantification

large-scale studies

Bayesian statistics

Bioteknologi

Biotechnology

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

ovr (ämneskategori)