Re-analysis of glycoproteomics data with Glyco-Decipher

Reanalysis of submissions PXD005411, PXD005413, PXD005412, PXD005553, PXD005555, PXD005565 and PXD019937 using Glyco-Decipher. Identification results of peptide-spectrum matches supporting Glyco-Decipher manuscript (Glyco-Decipher: glycan database-independent peptide matching enables discovery of new glycans and in-depth characterization of site-specific N-glycosylation). Recently, several elegant bioinformatics tools have been developed to identify glycopeptides from tandem mass spectra for site-specific glycoproteomics studies. These glycan database-dependent tools have substantially improved glycoproteomics analysis but fail to identify glycopeptides with unexpected glycans. We present a platform called Glyco-Decipher to interpret the glycoproteomics data of N-linked glycopeptides. It adopts a glycan database-independent peptide matching scheme that allows the unbiased profiling of glycans and the discovery of new glycans linked with modifications. Reanalysis of several large-scale datasets showed that Glyco-Decipher outperformed the open search method in glycan blind searching and the popular glycan database-dependent software tools in glycopeptide identification. Our glycan database-independent search also revealed that modified glycans are responsible for a large fraction of unassigned glycopeptide spectra in shotgun glycoproteomics.