MS_Piano: A Software Tool for Annotating Peaks in CID Tandem Mass Spectra of Peptides and N-Glycopeptides

Published

July 15, 2021

Author(s)

Xiaoyu (Sara) Yang, Pedatsur Neta, Yuri Mirokhin, Dmitrii V. Tchekhovskoi, Concepcion Remoroza, Meghan Burke Harris, Yuxue Liang, Sanford Markey, Stephen E. Stein

Abstract

Annotating product ion peaks in tandem mass spectra is essential for evaluating spectral quality and validating peptide identification. This task is more complex for glycopeptides and is crucial for the confident determination of glycosylation sites in glycoproteins. MS_Piano (Mass Spectrum Peptide Annotation) software was developed for reliable annotation of peaks in collision induced dissociation (CID) tandem mass spectra of peptides or N-glycopeptides for given peptide sequences, charge states, and optional modifications. The program annotates each peak in high or low resolution spectra with possible product ion(s) and the mass difference between the measured and theoretical m/z values. Spectral quality is measured by two major parameters: the ratio between the sum of unannotated vs all peak intensities in the top 20 peaks, and the intensity of the highest unannotated peak. The product ions of peptides, glycans, and glycopeptides in spectra are labeled in different class-type colors to facilitate interpretation. MS_Piano assists validating peptide and N-glycopeptide identification from database and library searches and provides quality control and optimizes search reliability in custom developed peptide mass spectral libraries. The software is freely available in .exe and .dll formats for the Windows operating system.

Citation

ACS Journal of Proteome Research

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jproteome.1c00324

Local Download

Keywords

peak annotation, peptide fragmentation, glycopeptide fragmentation, proteomics, glycoproteomics, mass spectrometry, software, peptide identification, glycopeptide identification

Citation

Yang, X. , Neta, P. , Mirokhin, Y. , Tchekhovskoi, D. , Remoroza, C. , Burke Harris, M. , Liang, Y. , Markey, S. and Stein, S. (2021), MS_Piano: A Software Tool for Annotating Peaks in CID Tandem Mass Spectra of Peptides and N-Glycopeptides, ACS Journal of Proteome Research, [online], https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jproteome.1c00324, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=932130 (Accessed October 1, 2025)