MRMAssayDB: an integrated resource for validated targeted proteomics assays

MOTIVATION: Multiple Reaction Monitoring (MRM)-based targeted proteomics is increasingly being used to study the molecular basis of disease. When combined with an internal standard, MRM allows absolute quantification of proteins in virtually any type of sample but the development and validation of an MRM assay for a specific protein is laborious. Therefore, several public repositories now host targeted proteomics MRM assays, including NCI’s Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium assay portals, PeptideAtlas SRM Experiment Library, SRMAtlas, PanoramaWeb and PeptideTracker, with all of which contain different levels of information. RESULTS: Here we present MRMAssayDB, a web-based application that integrates these repositories into a single resource. MRMAssayDB maps and links the targeted assays, annotates the proteins with information from UniProtKB, KEGG pathways and Gene Ontologies, and provides several visualization options on the peptide and protein level. Currently MRMAssayDB contains >168K assays covering more than 34K proteins from 63 organisms; >13.5K of these proteins are present in >2.3K KEGG biological pathways corresponding to >300 master pathways, and mapping to >13K GO biological processes. MRMAssayDB allows comprehensive searches for a targeted-proteomics assay depending on the user’s interests, by using target-protein name or accession number, or using annotations such as subcellular localization, biological pathway, or disease or drug associations. The user can see how many data repositories include a specific peptide assay, and the commonly used transitions for each peptide in all empirical data from the repositories. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: http://mrmassaydb.proteincentre.com SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.