Development of Software to Annotate/Interpret MS data of O and N-linked Glycans

描述(由申请人提供)：目前对能够进行快速和准确的数据分析的血糖软件的需求很大。近年来在质谱仪和吞吐量方面的进步使研究人员能够在相对较短的时间内产生非常大量的数据。由于信息学的发展没有跟上分析技术的进步，数据分析现在是基于糖组学发现的主要瓶颈。这在寻找癌症的糖链标志物方面尤其有问题，因为生物样本是以多次重复的方式进行分析的，产生了大量数据，必须进行比较和统计分析，以评估结果的重要性。因此，需要一种软件来帮助研究人员以高通量的方式分析他们复杂的糖组数据。本申请中提出的研究是设计一种易于使用的软件应用程序，该应用程序将允许对O-连接和N-连接的多糖进行MSN光谱的自动分配。我们之前已经开发了一个原型计算机算法，可以获取MS/MS光谱，并通过识别最有可能产生光谱的O-聚糖(S)或N-聚糖(S)来对其进行注释。这项提议的具体目的是将这个原型软件演变成一个更通用的软件包，我们希望最终将被糖链社区甚至更广泛的研究社区的研究人员广泛使用。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): There is currently a significant demand for glycomic software which enables rapid and accurate data analysis. The advances over recent years in mass spectrometry instrumentation and throughput has resulted is researchers being able to produce very large amounts of data in relatively short time periods. Since informatics developments have not kept pace with the advances in analytical technologies, data analysis now represents a major bottleneck in glycomics-based discoveries. This is especially problematic in the search for glycomic markers of cancer because the biological samples are analyzed in multiple replicates, creating a considerable amount of data which must be compared and statistically analyzed to evaluate the significance of the results. Thus, there is a significant need for software which assists researchers in analyzing their complex glycomics data in a high-throughput manner. The research proposed in this application is to design an easy to use software application that will allow the automated assignment of MSn spectra obtained for O-linked and N-linked glycans. We have previously developed a prototype computer algorithm that can take an MS/MS spectrum and annotate it by identifying the O-glycan(s) or N-glycan(s) that are most likely to have generated it. The specific aims of this proposal are to evolve this prototype software into a more general software package that we hope will ultimately become widely used by researchers in the glycomics community and even the wider research community.