MRMaid 2.0: mining PRIDE for evidence-based SRM transitions.

Selected reaction monitoring (SRM) is becoming the tool of choice for targeted quantitative proteomics. The fundamental principle of proteomic SRM is that, for a given protein of interest, there is a set of peptides that are unique to that protein. The characteristic retention time (RT), and intact peptide m/z of these so-called proteotypic peptides are then programmed into the mass spectrometer, along with the m/z of high-intensity product ions for targeted quantitation. The particular combination of RT, peptide m/z, and product m/z for a given peptide is referred to as a transition. Selection of the most appropriate set of transitions for a given set of proteins is crucial to any SRM experiment. We previously developed the web-based MRMaid tool, which suggested the optimal transitions for a given human protein by mining spectral evidence from a small in-house database. In this article we present a completely new implementation of MRMaid, which offers substantial improvements over the original. The new version, MRMaid 2.0, uses spectra from the EBI's PRIDE database, which massively increases the coverage and quality of transitions. Transition lists can now be generated for multiple proteins simultaneously, edited within the web browser, and exported for laboratory use.