Potential of MALDI−TOF MS-based proteomic fingerprinting for species identification of Cnidaria across classes, species, regions and developmental stages

Morphological identification of cnidarian species can be difficult throughout all life stages due to the lack of distinct morphological characters. Moreover, in some cnidarian taxa genetic markers are not fully informative, and in these cases combinations of different markers or additional morphological verifications may be required. Proteomic fingerprinting based on MALDI-TOF mass spectra was previously shown to provide reliable species identification in different metazoans including some cnidarian taxa. For the first time, we tested the method across four cnidarian classes (Staurozoa, Scyphozoa, Anthozoa, Hydrozoa) and included different scyphozoan life-history stages (polyp, ephyra, medusa) into our dataset. Our results revealed reliable species identification based on MALDI-TOF mass spectra across all taxa with species-specific clusters for all 23 analyzed species. In addition, proteomic fingerprinting was successful for distinguishing developmental stages, still by retaining a spec..., In total, 278 specimens of Cnidaria belonging to 23 different species from four classes were analyzed. Field specimens were morphologically identified to species level by taxonomic experts immediately after collection, before complete specimens or subsamples were preserved in undenatured ethanol (80 - 96%). 
From each specimen, a small tissue fragment (max. 1 mm³) was incubated for 5 minutes with 5 µl of alpha-cyano-4-hydroxycinnamic acid (HCCA) matrix. Of this incubated solution, 1 to 1.5 µl were transferred to a target plate on one to nine spots for co-crystallization of matrix and analytes. Each spot was measured one to three times using a Microflex LT/SH System (Bruker Daltonics). Employing the flexControl 3.4. (Bruker Daltonics) software, molecule masses were measured from 2 to 20k Dalton (kDA). A centroid peak detection algorithm was carried out for peak evaluation by analyzing the mass peak range from 2 to 20 kDa. Furthermore, peak evaluation was carried out by a signal-to-noise ..., Data can be analyzed using Bruker proprietary software such as Bruker Flex analysis or Bruker Biotyper. Alternatively, data can be analyzed in R using R-packages MaldiQuant and MaldiQuantForeign following the vignette that can be found via: https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/MALDIquant/index.html, Readme file for data uploaded to data dryad project: Data from: Potential of MALDITOF MS-based proteomic
fingerprinting for species identification of Cnidaria across classes, species, regions and developmental stages

Potential of MALDITOF MS-based proteomic fingerprinting for species identification of Cnidaria across classes,
species, regions and developmental stages in Molecular Ecology Resources

DOI:ADD UPON ACCEPTANCE

This dataset contains a .csv file called RefTable.csv and a .zip file containing raw
Bruker mass spectrometry files for 562 measurements from a variety of Cnidaria species.
These folder are build up according to the default Bruker flex container system
and contain one folder for each spot that was measured for a specimen. Each \"spot folder\" consists of folders for each
technical replicate measurement on the respective spot. Within these folders the actual data produced by the instrument can
be found. For each specimen, one to three folders can be found here.
The Ref...