From peaks to power - scans/peak still really truly matters!

 

If you've been on this blog much recently, I am sorry.

Also, you have probably seen me in some level of outrage about some recent studies where people have gotten anywhere from 1-4 measurements of the peptides they are looking at. Is it better than Illumina ProteinCrap? Absolutely. But is it good for mass spectrometry data? No. 

Why is it bad? Because some blogging academic says so? 

This new preprint looks at the problem in depth and finds that for high abundance proteins in blood, the 1-4 measurements per peak is actually not all that bad. Unfortunately....the cancer biomarker you are looking for is probably not albumin, transferring, or immunoglobulins. For low abundance proteins, getting fewer scans per peak means you miss any changes between healthy and cancer patient blood. So....honestly... what's the fucking point of doing the study anyway? 

They say it nicer than this here!