PECAN: Library Free Peptide Detection for Data-Independent Acquisition Tandem Mass Spectrometry Data

In mass spectrometry-based shogun proteomics, data-independent acquisition (DIA) is an emerging technique for unbiased and reproducible measurement of protein mixtures. Without targeting a specific precursor ion, DIA MS/MS spectra are often highly multiplexed, containing product ions from multiple co-fragmenting precursors. Thus, detecting peptides directly from DIA data is challenging; most DIA data analyses require spectral libraries. Here we present a new library-free, peptide-centric tool PECAN that detects peptides directly from DIA data. PECAN reports evidence of detection based on product ion scoring, enabling detection of low abundance analytes with poor precursor ion signal. We benchmarked PECAN with chromatographic peak picking accuracy and peptide detection capability. We further validated PECAN detection with data-dependent acquisition and targeted analyses. Last, we used PECAN to build a library from DIA data and to query sequence variants. Together, these results show that PECAN detects peptides robustly and accurately from DIA data without using a library.