Waterloo, Ontario – “PEAKS DB: De Novo Sequencing Assisted Database Search for Sensitive and Accurate Peptide Identification.” Database searching is the most common form of protein and peptide identification and researchers prefer this approach as it is very fast and very familiar. But is it the best? The danger is when the decision for speed takes priority over accuracy. While a 0% FDR is highly unlikely for any automated process without removing some quality candidates, there is one method which ensures the lowest FDR while maintaining high sensitivity. The approach integrates de novo sequencing results into the database search.

“PEAKS DB achieves significantly improved accuracy and sensitivity over two other commonly used software packages. Additionally, a new result validation method, decoy fusion, has been introduced to solve the issue of over-confidence that exists in the conventional target-decoy method for certain types of peptide identification software.”

The full publication can be obtained from the MCP website.