MSFragger-Labile: A Flexible Method to Improve Labile PTM Analysis in Proteomics

Posttranslational modifications of proteins play essential roles in defining and regulating the functions of the proteins they decorate, making identification of these modifications critical to understanding biology and disease. Methods for enriching and analyzing a wide variety of biological and chemical modifications of proteins have been developed using mass spectrometry–based proteomics, largely relying on traditional database search methods to identify the resulting mass spectra of modified peptides. These database search methods treat modifications as static attachments of a mass to particular position in the peptide sequence, but many modifications undergo fragmentation in tandem mass spectrometry experiments alongside, or instead of, the peptide backbone. While this fragmentation can confound traditional search methods, it also offers unique opportunities for improved searches that incorporate modification-specific fragment ions. Here, we present a new labile mode in the MSFragger search engine that provides the flexibility to tailor modification-centric searches to the fragmentation observed. We show that labile mode can dramatically improve spectrum identification rates of phosphopeptides, RNA-crosslinked peptides, and ADP-ribosylated peptides. Each of these modifications presents distinct fragmentation characteristics, showcasing the flexibility of MSFragger labile mode to improve search for a wide variety of biological and chemical modifications.