Advances in gas chromatographic mass spectrometric protein sequencing. 3—Automated interpretation of the mass spectra of the polyamino alcohol derivatives

A computer program, PEPALG, has been developed to interpret data generated in a gas chromatographic mass spectrometric experiment on a complex mixture of N-α, (ω)-trifluoroethyl-O-trimethylsilyl polyamino alcohols derived from a mixture of oligopeptides. The program incorporates all the types of data available to the user, including amino acid composition of the original protein or polypeptide, gas chromatographic retention indices, partial sequence information and the characteristics of the N-α, (ω)-trifluoroethyl-O-trimethylsilyl polyamino alcohol mass spectra. PEPALG has been used extensively in the past three years and is capable of correctly identifying in less than one hour at least 90% of the peptide derivatives in a gas chromatographic mass spectrometric experiment which generates 300 mass spectra.