Mass Spectrometry training (2023)

During my senior year, I participated in a comprehensive three-day training program titled "Fundamentals of Mass Spectrometry and Liquid Chromatography."

The course provided knowledge on the fundamental principles of mass spectrometry, including peak calculations, charge state assignments, de novo peptide sequencing, emerging proteomics, and the basic principles of high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC).

This training introduced me to de novo peptide sequencing, which can be defined as peptide sequencing performed without prior knowledge of the amino acid sequence. I learned about Peptide Fragmentation Nomenclature b, y, and ions. Subsequently, calculated the b and y ions of a given peptide was done manually and using protein prospector. Later, assigned the ions in the MS/MS spectrum of the given peptide.

Peptide Fragment Nomanclature

During the training session, I acquired knowledge on the analysis of intact protein spectra using various techniques such as deconvolution, deisotoping, and searching with ProSight Lite. Which is a freely available tool that is not specific to any particular vendor, and it is designed for the analysis of top-down mass spectrometry data.