Identifying crosstalks among post-translational modifications in lung cancer proteomic data

Abstract

In a lung squamous cell carcinoma data set containing over 20 million tandem mass spectra, we identified 860 peptides with post-translational modifications (PTMs) that were significantly upregulated in lung cancer samples as compared to normal samples using our new search engine named PIPI3. Among the modified peptides related to upregulated gene ontology terms, about 50% carried multiple PTMs. PIPI3 demonstrated its enabling power to provide insight into PTM crosstalk research.